i’d saunter down the streets. confident, knowing, unapologetically myself.

london, to me, was it. not just a city, but a whole life. i would dream of wandering the streets, getting to know its secrets and surprises. trying out the spots saved only for locals.

my first attempt at city life came in 2013, moving with a salary of £18,000. i have no idea how i paid for a flat and had any money to live (i didn’t). i told my mum on the phone after my interview for the eighteen thousand pound job that ‘i’d be fine! that’s more than enough!’. we accept a lot when we’re young and have big dreams.

a countryside girl finally living out her dream. what do we expect to find in cities, i wonder. connection? life? meaning?

instead i found the W7 bus home every evening, and a flat with damp on the bedroom wall.

a year later, i was back in the countryside.

and a couple more years after that, i felt the pull to move again.

maybe i hadn’t done it properly the first time. maybe i’d lived in the wrong part. maybe i’d been too young. maybe the city really was everything i’d imagined if i just gave it another chance.

so, another move to london. this time longer.

but still…i never, not once, felt at home. the isolation of being surrounded by people but feeling alone was suffocating. the streets i lived on did not feel like mine. they belonged to other people. i was a stranger in the supermarket, the local shop, the post office. as though i was walking around with a sign above my head saying ‘i don’t belong here’. i’m not sure i realised this at the time. these things so often come with reflection, distance.

i can’t pinpoint an exact time things changed in my mind. the point when the dream stopped feeling like a dream and started feeling like somewhere i was trying to convince myself to love.

all i know is the pull became a push. my desire to be there became the opposite - the desire to be out of it as quickly as possible. but we hold on to the ideas of our identity far longer than we should, don’t we. not realising or accepting that we’ve changed.

covid (oh covid) had a lot to do with it, in retrospect. i gradually moved out and to the suburbs of hampshire during covid, and every journey back to my london flat filled me with an unknown heaviness. i longed to be out of the city.

every train journey as i pulled out of waterloo felt like i could breathe a sigh of relief. even now, edging further away from the city after a day at work, i feel my body relax.

i wish i could see the beauty and excitement within london that i once saw. those days of scouring spareroom, sending requests to view, meeting random strangers with a hope to live with them a week later. all so i could believe i’d made it.

but eight years of working and five of those commuting have dulled its shine. an old penny exchanged by too many hands. perhaps if i polished it i would see its beauty again.

but i see dirty pavements, old tube lines, seat covers with too many stains to name, people, so many people.

i hear stories - from people i know, on the tv, on news sites - about london being dangerous. my colleagues have had phones stolen, purses nicked. holding your phone close to your body to ward off the e-bikers.

i know a lot of it is media frenzy. i’ve never felt unsafe.

but it still doesn’t feel like mine. as though a puzzle piece isn’t in the right place. when i walk to my office twice a week, i feel as though i’m floating through the streets. perhaps if i was a better writer i could pinpoint it. i’m an island, and everything and everyone else i come across when i’m in the city is the water surrounding me. lapping at the edges, surrounding me, but separate.

this is not said with sorrow. i don’t long for london to feel like home anymore.

i crave, on an almost physical level, big skies. open air. rolling hills. countryside smells. pastoral england.

will i long once again for the city if i leave. perhaps. distance makes the heart grow fonder, after all.

but right now, home is somewhere beyond the M25.

Thanks for stopping by to read On Wednesdays We Write. I’m Sophie and I talk about books, writing and life. If you’ve enjoyed this post, I’d love to have you here in the community.

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There’s always another book to add to the TBR…

Its coming up to one of the busiest seasons in the publishing world with Super Thursday at the beginning of September, and it certainly feels as though releases are ramping up. There are some huge ones on the cards this week, including Life of M, Agrippa and Big Little Truths.

It’s also quickly approaching that glorious time of year when it becomes socially acceptable to stay indoors and exclusively read cosy, autumnal hugs-of-books or spooky, creepy horrors, both of which I will certainly be partaking in over the next couple of months

If this is your kinda thing, scroll down to find my Summerween book recommendations and leave me your own in the comments.

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New or recently released to get excited for

Sophie, Standing There, Meg Mason

August 27th 2026

“Sometimes, it's true, one day in her life can feel like the entire month of January.”

A day feeling like a month of January is such a brilliant way to describe those long, grey, never-ending days we all seem to have sometimes, and this description alone is what’s put this release on the list.

Sophie, Standing There is a novel about loneliness, connection, and rebuilding a life. After her husband leaves her, Sophie feels invisible in her own life and becomes obsessed with a writer whose books she rediscovers. Our protagonist references Eleanor Oliphant (she’s a big reader) and I loved that book, so if it’s giving those vibes I’m all there.

In this Guardian review, the author is described as “brilliant, too, at describing the small but intense joys of everyday life.”

The Wife After Me, Nora Valters

August 24th 2026

A psychological thriller to take us into autumn, The Wife After Me follows an already messy situation between an ex-husband and wife, which becomes considerably more complicated when his new wife moves in.

From the description I believe this is written in the first person and it’s giving unreliable narrator vibes which I do often enjoy. It is said to appeal to fans of None of This Is True which I did a flash review of here, so if you’re in the mood for what is described as a “heart-pounding twist” (!), this could be the one to go for.

Agrippa, Robert Harris

August 27th 2026

I read and really enjoyed Harris’s Pompeii last year when I was in Italy. I saw it in a little bookshop in Capri the day after we visited the ancient ruins and it felt like a sign. Of course, I loved it because of its proximity to me visiting; it made the whole story feel even more vivid.

This new release returns to Ancient Rome, telling the story of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, close friend of Octavius. Following an epic battle, they rule over the kingdom with Octavius becoming Augustus - the top dog, in other words. Agrippa follows their shifting friendship as loyalty, ambition, and power begin to pull them in different directions. I think this will be an interesting one as some (or all?) of the story is Agrippa reflecting on his life at fifty years old whilst writing a memoir - looking back, reflecting on memories with the wisdom of space and time.

Life of M, Rachel Cusk

August 25th 2026

Life of M follows an author on a journey to write the autobiography of film star, ‘M’. There are rumours, or possibly facts(?), that this is based on Natalie Portman and there is some controversy over this. The articles linked below I hope may provide some context/food for thought:

It’s giving The Seven Husbands of Eleanor Hugo; rich and famous woman, writer given unfettered access to her in order to document her life, following the story through the many chapters of the subject’s life. However, as I understand without having read it, Life of M is much more experimental, whereas Eleanor Hugo was much more plot-driven and potentially accessible? Tell me your thoughts if you’ve read it.

Faber have put together a fab Rachel Cusk guide here. I’ve actually never read anything from this author, so I may start back in the Cusk Canon before diving straight in with the new release.

The Comeback, Mel Giedroyc

August 27th 2026

This sounds like it’ll be a heart-warming good time if you’re looking for something light-hearted and life-affirming.

Set in the world of amateur theatre, it has second chances, enemies determined to derail the show, backstage drama, and a cast of chaotic side characters.

It feels like the sort of book to reach for when you want something funny, comforting, and full of hope.

Big Little Truths, Liane Moriarty

August 27th 2026

This is a big one coming out this week - the sequel to the worldwide hit Big Little Lies, which was so popular it was made into a TV show.

Big Little Truths follows the characters as they’ve moved from rearing kids to bringing up teenagers - ten years after the events of the first book. The trials and tribulations of raising teenagers rather than little ones is a focus, but of course there are dramas and problems that each of the characters is facing as well.

As we’ve come to expect from Liane Moriarty, I’m sure not all will be as it seems. A severed human finger turns up at the school, fingers start pointing (although I presume not that one!) and secrets start to unravel.

Definitely one to pick up!

These Walls Remember, Del Sandeen

August 18th 2026

A Southern gothic novel with a house that’s possessed by the things that happened within its walls - I LOVE this sort of stuff. Whether it’s a film or a book, give me a creepy old house with a dark history and I’m all ears (eyes).

These Walls Remember follows two estranged sisters who inherit an old house in Savannah.

Publisher’s blurb: As the sisters learn about this house and its history, past wounds begin to fester and spill into the present: strange visions, memory lapses, unexplained accidents, and surreal echoes of the house’s previous inhabitants—some of whom disappeared after living in the home. The sisters suspect the residents of the sleepy Savannah neighborhood know more than they’re saying about what really happened there.

As the story develops, one of the sisters becomes increasingly attached to the house, while the other is desperate to get them both out.

The Crying Killer, Jess Lourey

August 18th 2026

A small-town thriller with a crazed serial killer who you thought was dead… but is he? Secrets, lies, new identities, paranoia - it sounds like it’s all happening in The Crying Killer. I can’t help but love a good crime thriller, especially if I’m looking for a quicker read in between some longer or slower books.

Apparently there is some true-crime inspiration and plenty of twists, so this feels like a perfect thriller to head into autumn with.

Bookish News

Ever since I heard Jack (of Jack in the Books fame - obvs you will all know him) talk about this book, and subsequently gift it to Anne Hathaway in an interview, Fruit Fly has been beeping away on my radar to pick up.

I haven’t yet, but I still want to talk about it because A24 has acquired the TV rights, so it looks like Fruit Fly is going from book to screen. A24 has a pretty great track record when it comes to making things that are a little bit weird and unsettling, so I’m very intrigued to see what they do with it.

A24 made Backrooms which is a great, disorienting horror that I’d recommend giving a watch (also, you should watch some of the hours of background videos available on the director, Kane Parson’s, YouTube channel).

As well as this, OneWorld publishers have acquired two new adult fiction novels from Silver, so it sounds like there’s lots to look forward to from this author.

HMV Book Expansion?

HMV is apparently set to become more of a high street book destination, and I’m quite excited about this. Although I adore an independent bookshop as much as the next reader (and will always champion one where I can), HMV has always had a pretty decent selection of books, so to see this potentially expanding feels like good news for readers.

My partner can happily spend an hour browsing the 4Ks in HMV, so if I get an even bigger book section to browse while he does that, I’ll be happy.

Also…since when do John Lewis have Waterstones in them?

I wandered into the Oxford Street John Lewis recently and noticed there’s now a Waterstones on the second floor. I didn’t have time to pop in last week (a genuine tragedy), but when I’m net in for work I will be paying it a lunchtime visit.

(I just Googled it and apparently it was in 2024 so I’ve just been walking around with my eyes closed and the Oxford Street shop was so popular that they're now rolling out more Waterstones concessions in other John Lewis stores too. Who knew).

Summerween Book Recs

Is it too soon to look at Summerween book recs? I think maybe, but I also think not. If you’ve not heard of ‘Summerween’ before, then you simply need to picture this: hazy, humid summer evenings, a hint of nostalgia in the air as the season feels on the cusp of turning, usually America-centred imagery, fun fairs, freedom and teenagers running rampant. A lot of fun to be had by all.

If you’re in the mood for this, let me share some of my recommendations with you below…

Clown in a Cornfield - Adam Cesare: it’s teenagers getting killed by crazy clowns. There’s bloodshed, it’s fun, it has those Summerween vibes - a solid choice for something gory and entertaining to get you going into spooky season.

A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder - Holly Jackson: Ok, this has been out forever but sometimes a little prompt to pick it up or re-read is a good idea.

It’s might not be Summerween in the spooky, supernatural sense, but it has everything you want from a summer mystery: a small-town murder, secrets and suspicious characters - all in an easy and quick to read mixed media setup.

Horrorstor - Grady Hendrix: fun, really liked the narrative voice which has a kind of playful, slightly ridiculous edge without taking away from the horror. It’s essentially a haunted IKEA where a group of employees are left to investigate strange goings-on after hours. The book itself even looks like a catalogue and I genuinely had a really good time reading this.

Mostly Human Resources - Grace Viall: released at the beginning of this month, Mostly Human Resources is one I’ve not yet read but sounds perfect for a Summerween read and I love the cover artwork.

It has corporate humour, a slow-burn romance and a missing person investigation, which all sounds like it will be very entertaining!

Joyland - Stephen King: This one ticks all the boxes for a Summerween read: there’s a murder, a ghost, summer nostalgia, old-fashioned carnival creepiness and a spooky story told in what I would say is a classic Stephen King way (which actually isn’t my all-time fave but, hey, who am I to judge one of the best selling authors of all time). It’s fun, quick and perfect for this transition.

We Have always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson: something a bit less rompy, I’m adding this in mainly because I just love this book. It gives cosy run down house but also murder mystery and unhinged, unreliable narrator. I love Merricat as a character, and particularly the strange, intense relationship between her and her sister.

It’s creepy without being full-on horror, and I can’t help but admire that unsettling feeling of something being just slightly off the entire time - something that Shirley Jackson does so well. Perfect if you want your Summerween reading to lean more gothic than gory.

Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury: The second on this list that’s a recommendation from afar (i.e. I’ve not yet read it), Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes is one that comes highly rated and highly recommended. Again, it’s got the right vibes: a travelling carnival, warm autumnal nostalgia, childhood friendships and underneath it all something sinister to raise the hairs on the back of your neck!

For something a bit different, I really enjoy flicking through Paperbacks from Hell (also by Grady Hendrix). It’s an incredible collection of horror books from the 70s and 80s, and has the most amazing pictures throughout. If you love pulp book covers and book artwork in general, you will love this (probably best if you do like horror too). It also gives history on what was happening within the genre at the time and is split up into brilliantly named categories such as Creepy Kids, Real Estate Nightmares and Inhumanoids.

The book everyone’s talking about…

You will no doubt have seen people talking about this if you’re even remotely interested in Bookstack (is that a thing?) and once again I’ve been doing the TBR shuffle to move it closer to the top of the must reads. And that is - Ann Patchett’s Whistler.

I don’t recall ever having read an Ann Patchett book and fear I may have been missing out, so think I need to remedy this quick sharp.

Taken from the publishers blurb: A moving, luminous story about how family, memory and love endures, Whistler paints an intimate portrait of how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.

I’ve seen this book described as '…top-shelf comfort food, the literary equivalent of pricey ice-cream'. We all know what a treat the expensive tub of ice cream is (in this economy even more so), so…sold.

I’m still reading John of John at the moment. It’s taking me a little longer to read and I’ve not had as much time to do so this week, but, I am loving it so far. I’ll be updating asap once I’m done.

I’ve also just borrowed the David Nicholls book You Are Here from my friend. I’m going away next week for a road trip around the UK - stopping in Liverpool, the Lake District and parts of North Yorkshire - and this book follows the story of two people who embark on the coast to coast walk from Whitby in North Yorkshire across the country to the further western edge of the Lakes. It couldn’t be more perfect to start reading and take along with me as I immerse myself in the landscape.

This week’s 5-star recommendation

This week’s recommendation is a short story from the aforementioned Shirley Jackson, and it’s called Nightmare. I read it in my copy of The Lottery and Other Stories collection.

This was a standout from the collection because of the building tension you can feel with every page. It follows Miss Morgan, who is sent on an errand by her boss to deliver a package. As she makes her way through the streets of New York City, she starts seeing adverts for a competition to Find Miss X. But…the descriptions of what Miss X look like are eerily similar to her own appearance.

It’s particularly tense because Miss Morgan can’t seem to find anyone who can help her make sense of what she’s seeing, so there’s a feeling of acute isolation in contrast to the busy, bustling city. I won’t spoil it by telling you how it ends, but if you want a lesson in how to write something powerful in just a short few pages, you should absolutely read this.

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Thanks for reading this week’s update, I’ll be back next Monday with more bookish updates and if you enjoyed this post, I think we could be friends.

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Now, let’s get into this week’s update…

“the increasingly serious pursuit of an interesting life.”

I take no credit for this doozy (complimentary) of a line - I read it on The Objects Girl’s Substack bio and thought, yes, yes that’s it. That’s what we’re cultivating.

Perhaps it’s the social-media-ness of it all (isn’t everything?), but I do think we’ve become very interested in the idea of an interesting life. Look at the popularity of academia, reading, note-taking, journaling, Goodnotes-ing; all these little visual signifiers of a life being lived with curiosity and intention. An interesting life is… a life well-read? A life spent learning? A life well-noted? A life documented?

I know I spent quite a long time pursuing a life that looked interesting so I could share how interesting my life was and, looking back, I’m not sure how much of it had substance.

A fairly wise old man once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”.

Perhaps that’s what we’re all doing. Examining ourselves, our lives, our place in the world, trying to figure ourselves and our interests out.

We’re all reaching for interesting-ness.

To prove to ourselves? To each other?

To perform interesting-ness?

Possibly.

I felt a deep need to seem interesting when I was younger. My biggest fear was somebody thinking I was boring. Oh the dread! For someone to think I was uninteresting, had nothing to say, was a prude or a loser or ‘uncool’ - I would have simply passed away.

But the funny thing is, ‘interesting’ has changed for me, as it likely has you, over the course of the years.

It used to mean going out drinking and partying with the sole intention being to have a funny story to talk about the morning after. It meant never being the first to go home. It meant saying yes when I wanted to say no, because having boundaries felt dangerously close to being boring in my teenage brain (and, who am I kidding, my 20s too).

Sure, I had plenty of fun, but I often wonder how much of it was performative? To feel like I fit in, to be liked, to feel part of something. How much of it was about actually enjoying my life, and how much was about having the evidence that I was enjoying my life?

Interesting now is wildly different, and an interesting life to me is one that has balance - peace, excitement, fun, contentment (among many other things).

What’s interesting is a new hobby, a new interest in which to lose yourself down a rabbit hole. An idea sparked by something I read or something I notice. A sentence in a book, something I read online. Discovering a new place, a new coffee shop. Rediscovering a love of the countryside (even as I say this I’m thinking ‘God that sounds uninteresting!’). Isn’t that interesting?

Curiosity. Perhaps that’s what it comes down to. A life of curiosity will forever yield interesting things, I think.

So, is an interesting life:

1. Something other people find interesting about me

2. A life I find interesting, no matter what others think

I’m increasingly inclined to the second…

I have written this earnest little meditation on the meaning of an interesting life, and now, in the absence of a sufficiently elegant literary segue, here are my book reviews.

Because reading has got to be one of the surest ways to be more interesting, and more interested.

Two of these books have been read as part of mine and my friend’s teeny tiny book club. Boy Parts and None Of This Is True were both outside of what we’d usually go for and while neither were 5*s, they certainly provided something to talk about (Boy Parts) and some entertainment (NOTIT).

Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

5-word summary:

Mean, unreliable and unlikeable narrator

Stars: ⭐⭐.5

Flash Review:

Let’s start here: I didn’t hate this as much as my friend did (not sure what that says about me). While I found our main character, Irina, distinctly unlikeable, I don’t often find that equates to not liking a book in its entirety. I enjoy reading about people who are different, nasty, strange, evil…in fact I probably prefer a book when they are, and this certainly delivered!

Boy Parts follows Irina, deeply depressed and battling inner demons, as she photographs men around her hometown of Newcastle, England, often in provocative or demeaning poses. What starts as a seemingly artistic pursuit becomes increasingly blurred with her personal life as she becomes more fixated on the men she photographs and less concerned with the boundaries between her subjects and her own fantasies.

She’s surviving, not thriving, as she becomes increasingly erratic: taking drugs, having destructive sexual encounters, and struggling with her increasingly unstable mental health.

For me it had similarities to My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh (which I know people also have strong opinions on). The main characters were equally flawed and both of them attempt to cover up some of these flaws through drug taking and alcohol abuse.

There’s an event that comes to light towards the end of the book (it is sprinkled in throughout) which leaves you feeling even more uncertain of what is true and what's a lie. I’m a reader who generally takes things at face value so I hadn’t even considered this thing not having happened, but my friend was pretty sure it wasn’t real.

Overall, I sped through the book and found it interesting, if not altogether enjoyable.

Fox by Joyce Carol Oates

5-word summary:

Uncomfortable, dark, unsettling murder investigation.

Stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

Flash review:

I had no idea what this was when I picked it up in a Waterstones ‘buy one get one half price’ deal, I just knew it was JCO and that was enough for me.

If you know anything about JCO you’ll know she’s always tackled tough, disturbing topics. She often writes about sexual abuse, the dark side of America, violence, identity and evil people. She’s not one to shy away from a tough subject and Fox is no exception.

This book follows Francis Fox, a teacher at a local elementary school, primarily teaching children between 8-12. He’s charming, charismatic, clever…and he’s also a paedophile.

Having been quietly let go from his old teaching job and having managed to lawyer his way out of a full-on firing, he starts teaching at a new school in a new area. He quickly becomes a favourite with female colleagues and mums of the school, who fail to see past his enthusiasm for teaching and intellect.

For Francis, however, his new classes are the perfect place to identify his next ‘Kittens’ - those young girls who will soon become his playthings.

Oates creates a truly horrific insight into the world of someone like Francis Fox, and it is very uncomfortable at times.

At the heart of the story is the investigation into Fox’s murder. His death happens right at the beginning, so it’s not really a spoiler to say this - and the rest of the book takes us through the events that lead up to what happened.

You get some sense of just desserts by the end, but are certainly left with an overarching feeling of discomfort. While it’s not an easy read (and I’d check the trigger warnings if you’re interested), I truly admire a writer who can create such atmosphere and emotion through words.

Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare

5-word summary:

Fun teen clown massacre horror

Stars: ⭐⭐.5

Flash review:

I really enjoyed the first third of this and thought the build-up and introduction of the characters were done really well. After that, though, I found it became a little repetitive, and by the time I got to around 90%, I was wondering where the core of the plot had actually happened.

In Clown in a Cornfield we follow our main character, Quinn, a teenager who has just moved to the small town of Kettle Springs with her Dad. The story centres on tensions between the older and younger generations in the town, and there’s a creepy town mascot, Frendo, who you know is going to cause some chaos later down the line.

There’s also a cast of characters from Quinn’s friend group, but none of them felt fleshed out enough to really care when they died. Much of this is down to who this book is aimed at (which isn’t me, it’s much younger), so I wasn’t expecting much more than some simple entertainment, and it mostly delivered.

Not the most groundbreaking horror I’ve ever read, but if you’re looking for an easy, entertaining slasher with plenty of blood and action, this will give you what you’re looking for.

None Of This is True by Lisa Jewell

5-word summary:

Manipulative unreliable narrator mixed media

Stars: ⭐⭐⭐

Flash review:

I love a good psychological thriller and I thought this was fairly solid, if a little simple, writing-wise. It gets an extra half point over Boy Parts because this was more fun and more engaging, in my opinion.

Was it terribly complex or particularly thought-provoking? No, absolutely not. But it did keep me questioning what was really going on, and there were definitely moments where I found myself wondering just how much of what I was being told I could actually trust.

The story centres on Josie Fair, who meets Alix Summer in a local pub where they discover they share the same birthday. What should have been a random coincidence seems to take on a deeper meaning for Josie, and she begins to become obsessed with Alix and her supposedly perfect life. Through both narrator-led storytelling and snippets of the podcast conversation the to of them do together, we learn that Josie has had a difficult and somewhat sheltered life. However, because the story is largely shaped by her own account of events, it’s difficult to know exactly how much of her version we should believe.

I found it interesting to witness the change in Josie’s demeanour from amiable and warm to demanding and obsessive and I could feel the tension in some of the scenes with Alix’s husband.

If you’re looking for a fast-paced, easy read thriller then you can’t go too far wrong with this one.

The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman

5-word summary:

Back with the old gang!

Stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Flash review:

Guys I just love these books so there’s not much to say - it’s great.

At this point in the series I’d sit and read about Elizabeth et al. watching paint dry, but this particular novel follows the Thursday Murder Club gang investigating the death of Holly Jackson and the disappearance of Nick Silver.

It’s not a random murder or disappearance, though, as it comes just days after Holly and Nick decide to cash out their Bitcoin, worth almost a quarter of a billion pounds.

There are, of course, a few side storylines with more personal ties to some of the main characters, which help to keep the story feeling fresh and give us a little more insight into the lives of our favourite four.

Honestly, if you’ve made it this far into the Thursday Murder Club series, I don’t really need to sell it to you. I already know you’re going to love spending time with these four again.

I would love to know what you’ve been reading recently! Have you had any 5 star reads, or maybe any 1 stars that you want to warn people away from! Let me know and leave me a comment below if you’ve read any of the ones mentioned in this post, and what you thought.

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Hi, I’m Sophie, and my Substack has been described as something akin to accidentally stumbling upon a secret diary, something I’m definitely taking as a compliment. I share writing updates (I’m writing a novel, or attempting to, at least), honest thoughts on creativity and the process of rediscovering it through writing, and weekly Monday book clubs where I share recommendations, new releases and bookish news.

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On Mondays We Read is my (new) regular round-up of bookish news: newly released and soon-to-be-released books, awards news, and reading recommendations - basically, all the things I think you’ll want to know about. There’s also a 5-star reading recommendation at the end - make sure to scroll down to see this week’s!

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There are two things I know for certain: I will never read all the books I want to read, and that will absolutely not stop me from adding more books to my TBR.

Books bring me so much joy, and this year I’ve become more serious about it than ever (I don’t know what ‘serious’ means, but I’ve read a lot, is what I mean). I love having a scroll through upcoming releases and immediately putting them above all the other books I thought I simply had to read right away.

There’s so much newness all the time, which is exciting and also slightly overwhelming to keep up with. So, consider this your weekly dose of bookish news, recommendations and reviews. I’ll be keeping an eye on what’s new, what’s coming next and what everyone is currently talking about, mainly because I love it, and I hope you do too.

And if you make it all the way to the bottom, you’ll find out which book I’ve heard everyone and their dog talking about.

As always, let me know what you’re currently reading and what’s next on your TBR.

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Four new releases to get excited for

- The House That Eats The Dead

US Release date: August 18th 2026, released in UK 13th August

If you know me, you’ll know I love horror, and The House That Eats the Dead promises to be a “darkly outrageous domestic horror” novel, so sign me up.

The story follows a family who have moved into a new house, but it’s not long before things start mysteriously disappearing and going wrong. A child’s toy goes missing, an egg disappears from inside its shell, flowers dry up much more quickly than they should. Lots of spooky happenings. We follow the new inhabitants as they try to work out what’s happening in their dream home, all while the house seems to be getting the better of our protagonist and slowly leading her to become somewhat undone.

I love a horror that focuses on something happening in your own home, the place you’re meant to feel safest, because it makes escaping the situation so much more difficult, adding to the tension.

I’m more than ready for scary season and while it feels slightly wrong to read a book that might better fit Halloween in the midst of a(nother) heatwave here in the UK, I’m always up for a good scary romp!

- Hello Baby

US Release date: August 18th 2026 (released in UK on July 30th - the US cover is cuter!)

This sounds like a really interesting read, following the lives of six women struggling to conceive and undergoing IVF treatment, and the messaging group they create, titled ‘Hello Baby’. I personally enjoy a novel with split perspectives when it’s done well, and being able to experience the story from multiple points of view, particularly with such an emotionally driven topic, should make for an interesting read.

The story goes on to see one of the women give birth to a baby daughter, only for the dynamics within the group to change when the news is shared. This is such a delicate and nuanced topic, and I’m really keen to see how the author handles the relationships here.

Sunrise, Téa Obreht

Released on 11th August 2026

If you’re at all aware of things going on in the book world you probably didn’t miss the release of Sunrise this week.

The cover alone is enough of a reason to add it to the list, right, it’s stunning!

Sunrise is an abandoned town in America and the book Sunrise follows three timelines of inhabitants or visitors to the town over the span of 100 years. It is described as a “novel that challenges the myths we think we know: of heroes and villains, of the places we lay claim to, and most of all, of our own lives.”

While I did say I like dual perspective I’m not always a fan of massive timeline shifts (and I would consider a 100 year span massive). I didn’t enjoy A Love Song for Ricki Wilde partly for this very reason, and it’s often because I simply prefer one timeline over another, meaning when I’m in the one I like less, I’m bored.

However! I will keep an open mind and open ears if you’ve read it and have any thoughts to share? 👇🏻👇🏻

Leave a comment

- Great and Precious Things, Rebecca Yarros

Paperback released on August 13th in the UK.

Author of the Fourth Wing series, Rebecca Yarros, had her book Great and Precious Things released in paperback last week and it’s a departure from the Fourth Wing world. I’m interested to see what her writing is like outside of the genre of dragons and fantasy, but do prefer a paperback which is why I’ve waited to pick it up.

Great and Precious Things is described as “a heart-wrenching story about family, betrayal, and what we’re willing to sacrifice for those who need us most.”

It follows Camden Daniels and his difficult relationship with his father after his brother’s death in the war. There’s a romance through-line back in his home town and it sounds like it will be an emotional read (which apparently I seem to be drawn towards recently).

The Prize News

The Booker Longlist

I don’t usually look that closely at what’s happening with book awards but having been loving reading more than ever this year I’ve found myself with an interest beyond simply picking books up at random (although I’m forever a mood-reader).

If you haven’t yet had a look, here are the longlisted books. The list was released a few weeks ago but I’m only just getting around to having a proper look at it. I’m particularly interested in John of John, following the success of Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain, and The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout, which I’ve just finished reading and will have a review of very soon. The shortlist is announced on September 22nd and both of these books are hotly contested to be on it.

I’m also really interested to read Switzy (released in September) - a book that touches on assisted suicide in Switzerland. Not perhaps the most upbeat of topics, but certainly intriguing to see how the topic is handled.

Black Bag is another long listed one that I really want to pick up - I mean look at that cover alone - it screams read me!

I’m in the mood for something a little different and I don’t often pick up funny books, so this one, described as ‘A masterpiece’ and ‘A triumph’ by the reviews on the cover, has got to be a good bet.

Publisher’s blurb:

A penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. How will Dr Blend’s students react to someone zipped into on oversized bag, sitting at the back of the lecture hall over a series of autumn term lectures?

Firehorse children’s fiction award

Independent publisher Firehorse have announced the winners of their New Novel Competition and they are Farah Rahman and AJ Pinehill.

Himalayan Blue, from Farah Rahman, is a YA science fiction novel and Marina’s Magical Orkney Adventure is a middle grade novel from AJ Pinehill. Read more about this award and their stories here.

The book everyone’s talking about…

I feel like I’ve been seeing May We Feed The King everywhere over the last couple of weeks. It won The Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2026 in July and it’s long-listed for the Booker Prize - it feels like this year’s it book.

It’s a novel “about our relationship with the past, truth and each other.” and sits in the literary historical fiction genre.

Having looked into the details, I understand it includes some fantasy or folklore elements and I’ve seen it described as ‘experimental’ - which can be a good or bad thing depending how well it’s done.

The premise sounds interesting and it features a dual timeline (see above comments on dual timelines!). We follow a present-day museum curator who becomes fascinated by the story of a forgotten medieval king who reluctantly finds himself in a position of power. The stories of the curator and king unfold alongside each other, and the boundaries between past and present become blurred as the story progresses.

Have you read May We Feed the King? I do sometimes find that books can get a bit overhyped, so I’d be really interested to hear from anyone who has read it - is it worth the time, or is the hype getting the better of it?

And what about the Booker Prize long list? Are there any on there you’re particularly interested in reading?

Leave a comment

This week’s read was the aforementioned The Things We Never Say, although I’ve actually finished it and am now reading John of John. TTWNS is an incredibly heartfelt story that follows Artie, a high school history teacher, as he grapples with memories of his life, feelings of not being understood, and the relationships that have shaped him. Relationships with his son, with his wife, and with his own story.

I highlighted quite a few quotes while I was reading this book (always a good sign) but there was a really poignant part quite early on when Artie, after attending a cocktail party with his wife, says:

“I wonder why people never say anything real?”

Small talk, secrets, conversations that gloss over what we really feel, who we really are. There’s so much to this story about human relationships and the human experience, and Strout writes it all beautifully. Keep an eye out for my full review soon.

This week’s 5-star recommendation

The Dictionary of Lost Words

A five-star read almost from the get-go, and one I always recommend to fellow book lovers because of its focus on language. The Dictionary of Lost Words is the story of how the first Oxford English Dictionary was compiled, which I found really interesting, and whose characters I loved as well. While the book itself is not actually a true story, it is centred around many real events and figures, and it gives a great insight into some of what went into this mammoth task.

While we get a look into the process of collating the words that went into the dictionary, it's also a story about which words and, more importantly, voices, were left out. I loved how the book focused on words associated with women and shows how those involved fought to have words considered ‘female-centric’ recognised and included in a dictionary compiled primarily by men.

The vibe is wholesome, with a focus on our main character Pip’s relationship with her father, as well as potential love interests and a cast of side characters that add a lot of charm.

It turns out this was a Reese’s Book Club pick back in 2022, which you can read a little more about here. If you’re looking for a cosy read, this one is absolutely a great choice.

Thanks for reading this week’s update, I’ll be back next Monday with more bookish updates and if you enjoyed this post, I think we could be friends.

If that sounds like you, I’d love for you to join me.

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Now, let’s get into this week’s update…

I’ve never refreshed my emails as many times as I have since deleting the ‘fun’ apps and simplifying my phone. It turns out breaking a digital addiction isn’t quite as easy as I first thought…

Keep reading to find out what worked, what didn’t, and what I’ve learned from trying to become a digital minimalist.

Have you ever reached the point where you realise you’re spending more time staring at your phone than actually looking at the world around you?

Well, I did, and I decided to do something about it.

The turning point came when I saw that my daily screen time was averaging over four hours, with my daily pickups creeping towards 100. Seriously, there was no reason I needed to be going on my phone that much, other than for mindless entertainment.

That was when I decided to finally pick up Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism and embark on a journey to break my phone dependency (you can scroll right to the bottom to find my three key takeaways from his book).

After a few years of watching my attention span get shorter and shorter, I began to find it difficult to concentrate on anything for more than five or ten minutes (sometimes including my actual job). Whether it was work, writing, researching…I was getting distracted constantly.

Reaching for my phone when I should have been focusing, looking for a fun hit of dopamine to ease the boredom or slightest frustration when figuring out a tough bit of work.

It didn’t feel good.

I found that I never quite reached that deep work, flow state where you’re completely absorbed in what you’re doing, where the best work is done, because the always-present phone had become a distraction that I felt strangely incapable of ignoring.

Something needed to change.

I wanted more space in my brain to think, daydream, focus, be bored, and or just do nothing without videos and pictures and sounds.

So, I decided it was time to release some of the weight of the digital world from my life and my mind, and reclaim some of my focus and brain power.

What actually is Digital Minimalism?

My digital minimalism journey

The journey started late last year (prior to reading Newport’s book) when I removed Instagram from my phone, followed by Facebook earlier this year (which is ironic, because I’d only started using it again a couple of years ago after about five years away. I’m not even sure why I did that).

I was never a TikTok user, so a couple of months ago the only social platforms remaining were Substack and YouTube, as well as LinkedIn which I pretended wasn’t social media but really was.

Honestly, getting rid of Instagram and Facebook was not hard at all. Those accounts I used to follow and watch, the people I thought I cared about (but who I’d never met and never would) - forgotten. It turns out that when you stop being constantly reminded that these people exist, you stop thinking about them. And I’m really talking about influencer strangers here, rather than your actual friends and family - people you can, after all, contact directly rather than through social media.

If there’s one thing to take away from this article, it’s this: delete the app you struggle with the most for a week and see if you even remember any of the accounts you used to spend your time scrolling through.

So, with some minimisation done, I was left with all the other apps: banking, shopping, travel etc. but I generally don’t spend hours a day scrolling through my bank transactions.

I organised my home screen, put everything into folders, and tried to be a little more conscious of when I was picking my phone up.

So you’d think my screen time would have gone down, right?

Well, yes, for a couple of weeks, but soon enough other distractions found their way in. Where I was once scrolling reels, I was now scrolling shorts. Where I was once pretending to care about what that person I went to secondary school with was doing on Facebook, now I’d find them lurking on LinkedIn.

iPhones only keep screen time data for the last four weeks, so below is all I have to show you. But as you can see I’m still averaging over three to three and a half hours a day.

Look at the top-right image: 24 hours of screen time over the course of a week. A WHOLE DAY spent on my phone. That’s sick and not in the good way.

At this point, I still had YouTube on my phone and YouTube is my Everest. So, I made the radical decision (that’s not radical at all) to delete it from my phone and allow only TV or laptop watching.

I will give myself some grace. I often play a YouTube video while I’m getting ready, only half paying attention, really just for some background noise. But I do wonder if there are better things I could be listening to - music, a podcast, perhaps, rather than “I tried everything in the Lidl bakery so you don’t have to” (This is seriously a video in my recent watch history).

The problem is, there’s always someone new to watch. Always hours to spend exploring someone’s back catalogue.

We all know that this is what the tech companies want, we’ve all watched The Social Dilemma (if you haven’t you should). They set up their interfaces and algorithms to keep us engaged, and boy, does it work.

It’s one of the things I appreciated about Newport’s book when I eventually picked it up recently: he isn’t blaming us for being addicted to our phones. Instead, he’s encouraging us to think more intentionally about our usage - to make technology work for us and the lives we actually want to live.

Next on the minimalisation journey was emails.

So, other than YouTube, what was it that was keeping my attention?

Emails.

When there’s no Instagram, TikTok, Facebook - even Daily Mail - there’s not actually a lot to do on your phone. My emails suddenly became the most interesting thing on there, and I found myself refreshing my inbox every hour in the hopes of something dropping in to keep me entertained for five minutes.

This is where I noticed it wasn’t about the apps themselves at all, it was about distraction. Any sort of distraction possible. Reading Newport’s book made me realise this. I’d trained myself to reach for distraction whenever there was the slightest gap in my day. Remove one distraction and my brain simply found another.

Letting go of the urge to grab my phone was what I needed to work on.

But stepping back for a moment, I first needed to get on top of my inbox.

I had over 30,000 unread emails in my Gmail account. (Please tell me I’m not alone).

Subconsciously, every time I was going on to my account I was feeling the weight of years of email history.

All these emails I was receiving (and for some reason keeping) were building up a type of clutter that I don’t even think I realised was weighing me down.

That marketing email from [Insert Brand Name] might seem innocuous enough, but each one you receive is asking something of you…

To delete it.

To read it.

To click it.

To buy it.

To deal with it in some way. Or to leave it to build up until you have tens of thousands of tiny bits of data sitting there, weighing down your digital space.

Unless…

We choose to opt out, both literally and figuratively. Which is what I started doing.

I started by deleting over 15,000 promotional emails dating back to 2012. Man, that felt good. I didn’t need a single one of them.

Whenever I receive a promotional email now, I unsubscribe (unless I really, really want to hear about what they’re doing), and I search the email domain and delete all the emails I have from them if there are any lurking. This has been incredibly cathartic.

(Something to be aware of that I think is pretty sneaky is oftentimes companies will email you from different domains - one day it might be ‘hello@companyname.com’, the next it might be ‘marketing@companyname.com’. Just when you think you’ve got them all, another one pops up like bloody Whac-a-mole.)

Then I started organising my emails into folders, and subsequently working my way through the other thousands of emails which were deemed important enough not to be in promotions. I’m still not all the way there, with over 6000 still unread, but I’m working my through it.

But being more conscious about what comes into my digital world via email feels like a tiny way to set my boundaries and maintain sovereignty over my world. I highly recommend doing this as an early step if you’re considering minimising your digital space.

But, going back to that need, that urge, to pick up my phone, and a note I saw from Julie Fratantoni which whacked me around the head with a realisation when I saw it.

It’s not about the phone or the apps, it may not even be about the distraction I mentioned earlier, but instead, it’s a way of regulating my emotions. A ‘pacifier’ as she calls it - one used ‘to avoid stress, boredom, or unpleasant feelings.’

This.

This made total sense. This is why it never felt good. This is why I felt as though I was distracting myself from the real world, when really a quick scroll online should be a fun way to spend a few minutes. It didn’t feel fun, because I was using it to blanket any feeling - good or bad - that might have surfaced.

I haven’t got it all figured out yet, not by a long way, but the more I untangle my life from my phone the more it feels like a need to do so, rather than a want.

And finally, internet browsing.

This was, surprisingly, not something I’d thought of in the context of digital minimalisation, but has turned out to be one of the hardest things to curb. I’m the type of person (v. type B) that will have 20,30,40 tabs open at any one time - both on my laptop and my phone.

Even as we speak, I’ve not made much progress with this, but it’s very much on my mind. I keep lots of tabs open because I think I might need it later or I’ll forget what it was I was looking at. They act as a kind of memory-jogger, but in reality all they do is clog up my brain (and computer) space.

I’m hoping that with continued minimalisation I won’t need my memory to be jogged so much - I might actually have some space in there to retain information.

I’ve come to see surfing the internet, even when it does have the guise of ‘research’ or ‘learning’, as simply another way to distract myself from the actual DOING of the thing.

Looking back on growing up, I don’t think things were better just because we didn’t have all this tech. Technology has made life easier in countless ways. Maps, banking, shopping, talking to loved ones, news - there’s loads of things that are brilliant.

But it did feel like there was more time and space for boredom and daydreaming. If I was waiting for my mum to finish shopping, I waited. If I was on a long car journey, I stared out the window. I wasn't constantly being offered something more interesting every thirty seconds.

I feel lucky to have grown up in a time, the late 90s (or, as the kids apparently call it now, “the late 1900s”), when mobile phones did two things fairly well, but were not common: make calls and send 10p text messages, plus other things badly: download ringtones and pixelated wallpapers. Try to access the internet and load a web page?

Absolutely not.

This was a time when the family computer lived in the corner of the living room and you had to unplug the phone line to access the internet [insert dial tone here], usually meaning a strict time limit to go and play on Neopets or chat to your friends on MSN.

I’m grateful that I didn’t have a handheld computer available to me at all times with access to all the information in the world ever at my fingertips.

The problem is, we’ve become conditioned to think we need all the other stuff too. To think that our phones are a vital part of our daily lives. And I fear, speaking for myself and myself alone, that it has become too much of a distraction from the ‘real world’.

Add on to this the lack of focus for things I actually want to be doing - writing, reading, spending time outside - and it felt like something I truly needed to tackle.

So, what’s next?

I want to continue to get that screen time down. As you can see it has gone up and down, but I would really like to get it under 2 hours a day. I’m going to do another clear out of emails and apps, and make sure I’m considering why I’m picking it up when I do. If it’s just because I’ve been bored for 0.5 seconds I need to choose differently.

As well as this, none of my digital minimalisation so far has reached the likes of TV consumption and it’s something I do want to start looking at. I don’t feel as though I spend that much time watching TV, but I do spend a couple of hours each evening doing so, when I feel I could be doing something else.

I might continue to use some platforms, but only on my computer. It’s the phone that gets me stuck most of the time, but if I want to check in on anything, I’m limiting myself to laptop-access only.

I think each moment of stopping and questioning is a step towards being more intentional. As Newport repeatedly highlights throughout his book, it’s not about getting rid of everything for the sake of it, but about asking whether the things we do have are adding value to the life we want to lead.

I’m going to keep that question in mind.

I would love to know if you’ve embarked on a digital detox of any sort, if you’ve read Digital Minimalism, or if you’ve ever felt like you can’t get a grasp on your phone usage? Let me know and let’s have a chat in the comments.

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I won’t simply repeat everything that’s on my About page because you can read that here, but what I will say is I’ve put this post together to help you navigate around my page a little more easily, and to get a glimpse of what On Wednesdays We Write is all about.

I’m currently part-way through writing my first novel and share updates as I go. It’s aiming to be a gothic thriller mystery but whether it will get there is solely up to me, so come and cheer me on (please).

If you're someone who loves books, is trying to write something, or is just trying to find your way back to a more creative life, you’re in the right place!

My Top Posts:

I didn’t see it coming, you didn’t see it coming, but these really are the posts that have the biggest views and and highest open rates. I’m particularly proud of the last one on this list, which is all about writing short stories with Joyce Carol Oates (not literally).

Rediscovering Creativity

A big theme on my page here is finding my way back to feeling creative, sharing ways I’ve found work for me, stories on creativity, and little things you might pick up to help you rediscover your own creativity, too.

Writing and reading have been my way of rediscovering the sort of creativity you had as a child and bringing it into my everyday as an adult. I’m a full-time working gal with a Substack side quest and it can be hard to fit it all in, but here’s where I share the ups, downs and sideways of giving it a go anyway.

Share On Wednesdays We Write

Writing

Writer’s Routines

These writer routine deep dives have been some of my most popular posts, and I can understand why. Not only do I love researching and putting these posts together, it’s also a great way of picking up the most brilliant advice for your own writing or creative journey. While you’re reading them, leave me a comment on who you’d like to see advice from next!

Writing updates

Books

Ah books. The joy of my life. Buying them, reading them, talking about them. They’re the gift that just keep giving. This is actually a topic I feel I want to expand on more here on my ‘stack, with more deep dives and roundups of what I’ve read. For now, enjoy. My favourite post in this section so far is ‘Sentences I’d Steal’ because I got to go back through all my annotations and pull them out to read again, that was genuinely fun to put together (and I should really do another soon).

Seasonal Snippets

I love sharing small moments from my life in Hampshire and try to notice things that I share about the seasons as they come. I’m not always great at this (yet) but one of my intentions this year was to live a little more mindfully, and sharing inspirations and lovely things that catch my eye is one way I’m doing just that.

Some Substack posts I’ve loved from other people (to be updated further!):

Proof of Life

the morning routine

Every morning I wake before the house does, the app says, and I believe them because they have a photo of fog over a lake…

Read more

5 months ago · 15 likes · 4 comments

Chaotic Classics

a love letter to annotating

When I was sixteen, my favourite English teacher gave our class some advice: never read without a pen in your hand. I haven’t since. I’d call it a habit had it not become a compulsive behaviour…

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6 months ago · 798 likes · 45 comments · Emma Angeline Schilders

Bookish AF

If You Love Bookstores and Libraries, Read These Books!

Hi, my bookish friend…

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4 months ago · 59 likes · 39 comments · Audry Fryer

i remember

do you cry on your birthday or are you normal?

When November approaches, I find myself wondering what it is about my birthday that sends me into the deepest, darkest pit of misery. The melancholy I have been inadvertently honing throughout the year seems to coalesce into a single, unbereable point, ironically coinciding with the date of my coming into this world. The f…

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4 months ago · 80 likes · 23 comments · laura

The Shit No One Tells You About Writing

✨Even More Exciting Deep Dive Reveals & Protecting the Spark that Got You Started✨

Happy Friday, future podcast guests…

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10 months ago · 25 likes

Teacher by Trade; Mentor by Mistake

Thanks for Nothing

Seeing as it’s the season to be thankful, I’d like to offer my deepest gratitude to a select group of people, institutions, situations and memories that have made my life far more difficult interesting than it ever needed to be…

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9 months ago · 44 likes · 50 comments · Daniel Puzzo

I’m 14, lying in my bedroom, curled at the end of the bed with my head on the pillow I made when I was 9.

Sequins and ribbon and an old cushion cover, hand-stitched and lumpy.

I can hear Sue Barker on the tv interviewing people, standing on the once-pristine green grass, now a patchwork of brown; feet pounding backwards and forwards for a fortnight. People are being congratulated on their performances, being handed trophies; plates and cups.

Tears are falling down my face, sideways across the bridge of my nose so that a tear from one eye falls into the other before tumbling down and soaking the pillow beneath my head.

Andy Roddick has just lost the Wimbledon final against Roger Federer.

I’m sad - not because Roddick lost, but because I’m in mourning.

Mourning the passing of another year, anxious about the prospect of a whole new one to discover until the next tournament.

My dad - my wonderful, caring dad - is there. He’s trying his best to understand what has upset me, to console me if he can. My dad, with a certain, present, soft way of listening, careful not to overstep, but wanting to soothe his youngest daughter’s anguish.

The bed sags as he sits and places a hand on my foot, reaching out to understand what’s wrong. I can no longer recall what he said to me.

At 14 my vocabulary struggles to put into words that it’s not about the loss of the match, it’s about the loss of something so much bigger.

A loss of who I am, a transformation, I suppose, that I couldn’t recognise at the time. A loss of childhood, perhaps not right then, but soon - at an age of in-between.

I am afraid of what will change.

Not ready to grow up yet. But the match is over now.

Another day closer to life moving on. A realisation that things won’t stay as they are. Friends are changing and discovering new friends, university is looming in the distance, siblings are moving out and starting new lives. Lives that no longer get tangled up in the blissful normalcy of living under the same roof. Of knowing someone instinctually, thoroughly, consumingly.

A sense, tingling at the edges of my awareness, that times like this - the unassuming highs of life - wiling away an afternoon, a balmy summer evening spent watching tennis with your parents - are already on their way out.

Hoping for a 5-set match just so that the night wouldn’t end.

A blurry, misty sense of life being finite.

A longing to hold everything for just a few more moments in a warm wrap of sameness.

The tears aren’t about Roddick losing, not Wimbledon being over, but life being bookmarked by the end of the match. Signalling the end of a tiny era, a fraction of time when everything was just as it was.

Getting ready to do it all again. The same but different.

Now, 20 years later, I’m not sure much has changed, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s just a part of me. Feeling things deeply, thinking about life frequently. An always present sense that every experience is worth cherishing, if only for the fact that it might not happen again.

I wish that meant I live every day to its fullest, but can anyone really?

I don’t know how many more Wimbledon matches I’ll get. Thirty, forty, fifty. Maybe more. Each one a little different. Watched with different people, in different circumstances. Not better or worse, just different.

Writing, I think, is my attempt at slowing things down. Or at least marking it; saying ‘yes, this really did happen’ when it all seems to go by so quickly.

Perhaps it’s my way of holding things still for a moment, just a fleeting moment where I’m back in my bedroom with the warmth of my dad’s hand on my foot.

Hi, I’m Sophie, and my Substack has been described as something akin to accidentally stumbling upon a secret diary, something I’m definitely taking as a compliment. I share writing updates (I'm writing a novel, or attempting to, at least), honest thoughts on creativity and the process of rediscovering it through writing, and the occasional seasonal round-up of lovely things.

I also talk about books quite a lot.

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I’m currently reading: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson

Next up is: Boy Parts, by Eliza Clark (my book club book of the month)

And after that, probably: Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy

Thanks for reading, and see you in the next one.

A special thank you to my paid subscribers, this one is dedicated to you.

If you enjoy what you read and want to support my writing, you’ll be welcomed to this space with open arms and a big smile.

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I recently found my Substack FYP inundated with posts telling me how I should be approaching my newsletter in order to grow by thousands of followers in just a few days. I have a theory that because I took a few weeks off post-Christmas, Substack has been trying to lure me back in with promises of fame and wealth, when in reality all I really want to see is people writing good stuff that means something.

In a bleary-eyed morning scroll I found myself reading through one of these posts and, loathe to admit it, something stuck with me.

The post was talking about “content pillars” (I know, I know), and while it’s hardly a ground-breaking idea, it did get me thinking. There has been a recurring theme in not only the posts I’ve written on here but in my mindset too.

I’ve noticed a shift from the heady days of my twenties when I viewed creativity like something sent down from the Gods, something only for those who were bestowed the gift (I’ll talk more about this below), something I might dip into now and then when I was bored, with no real promise or intention. To today, now, where creativity (writing in particular) is something that feels like part of my identity.

Having the space here and in my other writing to be creative feels like a need, rather than a want. It has become an outlet for me, but it hasn’t happened by chance. It has happened, it has had to happen, intentionally. Because creativity isn’t inherent to people. Or perhaps that’s wrong. It’s not that it isn’t inherent, but that it gets crushed and squashed and dissolved while living and surviving. Adulthood dims creativity. I’ve experienced it first-hand, but instead of letting it completely extinguish, I made a pact with myself to fan the flames and revive it.

And that’s what this post is at its core, it’s about how I’ve rediscovered creativity in my mid-30s: the things that have truly helped me find my rhythm with writing, and helped to bring back some of that child-like wonder and joy that comes when we allow our creativity time and space to breathe.

It does terrify me slightly that I’m at an age where I can write about rediscovering something - meaning I’m old enough to have discovered it in the first place, but here I am, and it’s something I’m quite intensely passionate about: discovering, rediscovering, recovering your creativity.

1: Let go of the lazy genius myth

I spent most of my teens and twenties convinced I was a dormant genius. A true, marvellous literary genius, just waiting to be unleashed if and when I decided to. The only problem was the unleashing never quite happened.

Do we all think this when we’re growing up? That we’re uniquely talented, we’re just a little lazy so never reach our potential?

Living with this over-inflated ego always made starting feel pointless.

It kept me stuck for longer than I’d like to admit because there was always a sense of comfort gained from it:

I can just pick up my pen tomorrow and write something brilliant.

I can write an article that good, I just don’t want to.

I can write a poem easily, it’s not difficult and I’m a literary guru.

Because I presumed my own abilities and intelligence, I never actually did any of those things (to any notable outcome, at least). My presumption was not just that I could do them with ease given 5 minutes and a piece of paper, but that others would also presume the same thing. Give me a face-to-face with a Big 5 agent and they’d obviously see that I’m their Next Big Thing, without having written a word?

Look up delusional in the dictionary and I’m sure you’ll see me there.

My miraculous revelation since, thankfully, was realising I was perhaps not the prodigy I thought I’d been ignoring, but actually just a normal person, with average abilities, that could perhaps be honed to something passably good if I gave it a go. And in many ways, that revelation has been remarkably freeing.

I’m no longer relying on my non-existent special powers, the ones that were lying so dormant not even an earthquake could make them erupt. Instead, I’m relying on consistency, and practice, and time.

No, it’s not as exciting as believing you’re inherently gifted, but so far its gotten me a lot further ahead, so I’ll be sticking to it until the day any sudden talents care to show themselves.

Just to let you know, I really appreciate you stopping by to have a read. These posts take time and love to create, and if you want to, you can support the writing I do by subscribing below or giving a small donation (likely to go towards a book).

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2: Keep a creative commonplace (do it!)

I spoke in depth about my commonplacing habits in the post below and I stand by the fact that having a space to note down your creative inspirations is something that will transform your process and your mindset.

Fundamentally, having a creative commonplace means you’ll be on the lookout for inspiration as part of your daily life. It has turned an average trip to the shops into an adventure where I might overhear a conversation or bump into someone I know and come home not just with some apples and milk, but with the seed of an idea for a short story.

My twice-weekly commutes to the office stop being a wasted couple of hours of suffering, standing in a smelly, too hot or too cold vestibule because no seats are available, to an opportunity to write about said smelly, hot/cold vestibule. I had a brilliant (?) idea sparked last year to write about the 10 commandments but make it all train related. “You shall not covet”, and yet I’m here coveting the seat you’ve had since Weymouth. Watch this space, the very bare bones of it are sitting in my journal.

Carry it around with you, make it pretty, keep it simple, jot down notes or thoughts you have alongside inspiring phrases and quotes and musings.

If you want some ideas of what to include in your commonplace, here are some:

• Quotes and excerpts – From books, essays, articles and a note on why it resonated.

• Mini essays – Short reflections (200–500 words) on a single idea, theme, or observation you want to explore further (more on this below)

• Poems and literary snippets – Lines that inspire, teach, or simply delight, accompanied by your thoughts or interpretations.

• Anecdotes – Overheard moments: a tip you hear someone say, a conversation between friends.

• Tools, systems, or frameworks

There are no rules to it - make it work for you. I know that if I try to follow someone else’s framework for a commonplace too strictly I’ll feel constrained and stop using it, so carry a notebook around with you for a few weeks and figure out what inspires you to keep it up. The more you use it, the more useful it will be.

Something I now do on at least a weekly basis is go looking for creative inspiration. I stop waiting for it to come to me, and instead I open my eyes and look for it. It’s out there, much closer than you think, and every time I do this I come away with something to inspire a post, or part of my book, or simply a sense of creative energy.

My least creative periods of life have been the ones in which I’ve closed myself off (consciously or otherwise) to the opportunities that surround me. I’ve read books or watched films or talked to people with little to no afterthought. With a commonplace habit in mind, you might jot down the next thing to inspire your best project yet.

3: Set aside creative time and protect it with your whole being

In the spirit of Julia Cameron, setting time aside to get down with my creative self has been make-or-break for me. The humdrum of daily life very often leads me to feeling overwhelmed, less so because any of what I do day-to-day is difficult, more so because there are so many things I could (should) be doing instead.

By the time mid-week comes around my brain is already full and it’s when I feel my least creative. That’s why I turned Wednesdays into a creative date.

You might think my newsletter name was chosen by random (and, of course, to the observant among as an ode to the noughties classic Mean Girls), but it was a semi-thoughtful intention I set to come back here every week and write.

It is far, far too easy to let time for ourselves and our creative outlets slide, but the more you do it the more creativity leeches out of your being. I mentioned in a recent note that as soon as I sit down and start writing - whatever it might be - I feel that creative spark firing up again. It takes about 10 minutes and suddenly I have ideas flowing again, and I’m excited to get back to creating.

It’s a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it will become and before you know it every day will feel like a creative opportunity.

Life will always throw something up that feels more important than allowing yourself some time to get creative. I know - I’ve always got some sort of DIY project on the go (looking at you kitchen), or something in the garden that needs doing, or dinner that needs cooking - but when you’ve got your creative date in the diary you must stick to it. If you skip it once, you’ll skip it again, so don’t do yourself a disservice by thinking it’s not important.

4: Try, cry and try again

Start writing something in your 20s, stop for a decade, then pick it up again when you finally decide no one is gonna do it for you and and you need to stop being a bit of a fanny about it.

Ok, I jest, and you might already be too late if you missed the ‘be creative’ memo in your 20s, but I am telling you that now is the time to stop putting off the thing you want to do and just bloody well get on with it.

There will come a time, whether it’s today or in a month/year/decade, when you finally decide it’s time to quit the excuses and start living up to (at least some of) your potential. It’s the easiest advice to give and the hardest to follow through on, because this is the point when I’m saying ‘JUST GET ON WITH IT’ and you’re left with no choice other than…get on with it. If you’ve tried before, like I have many many times, let this be your sign to try again.

Write an article, throw together a poem just to prove that you can, put some words together and create a sonnet. Do something today that gets the creative ball rolling - I promise you’ll feel better for it.

And if it turns out crap, or you get some bad feedback, have a little cry about it and then come back and do it again. When you feel worried about creating something, ask yourself what’s the worst that can happen - then write about that. Just do anything.

There’s a quote I often think about when it comes to starting (or re-starting) a project: “Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.” By the end of today, you could have written a short story, a poem, or even just an entry in your journal, but that’s more than nothing. Alternatively, you could have watched another show on Netflix that you’ll half remember in a week’s time and still not have made any progress on your creative project (can you tell I’m shouting this at myself, as well as you?).

Just do something - it might lead somewhere.

5: Buy and do the things that you don’t think are for you

This might be a very niche one, but one I do hope some of you may resonate with. It’s to do with the boxes we put ourselves in.

I’ve written before about how being a writer has long felt like something that’s only for other people. Being a writer is a world I don’t belong to because I’m not literary enough, because I didn’t write voraciously as a child, or because I haven’t read all the classics.

This might look different for you - you might feel you don’t belong as an artist, perhaps, so you don’t attend art shows or groups. Perhaps you’re a runner, but you can’t join the local running group because that’s only for ‘real runners’.

Recently, I’ve started buying and reading writing or writing-adjacent magazines and it has been a real joy. I feel like I’ve let myself into a world I’d forgotten existed (yay for physical media making a comeback). Sometimes, sitting down with one of these magazines and a cup of tea has classified as my Wednesday creative date, and it has been enough to maintain that creative mindset.

My next step in this particular journey is to join (and actually attend) a writer’s group - whether locally or online. It’s one of those things that has (and still does)1 feel a bit too far out of reach. People will have to actually read my work?! People will critique me and I might dissolve into a puddle of fear and shame over how perfunctory or amateurish my writing is.

They are all ‘real’ writers and I am someone cosplaying at being a writer. Oh god!

There are spaces we feel comfortable, and there are spaces we don’t, and I’ve found that the more we just say ‘fuck it’ (yes, even when buying a magazine about writing that we may otherwise have thought was for someone else) the more we can start to feel part of the thing we want to be a part of.

A final note from me on rediscovering creativity, as says below: “if it’s your calling, it will keep calling.”

Thank you for reading and if you’ve made it this far extra special thanks - why not give it a like and leave me a comment to let me know your thoughts on rediscovering creativity.

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Book I Want To Read

This week’s Book I Want To Read (a new addition to end my newsletters - a book I’ve come across recently that has sparked my interest), let me know if you’ve read it and if it’s worth picking up!

I’ve promised and promised again an article on my reading of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and it is coming. In my pre-Christmas excitement for the year I got a little ahead of myself and thought writing a monthly essay with profound thoughts and ideas on classic books would be easy. Alas, wanting to produce a piece analysing the text and my own thoughts on it has been harder (in a positive way) than I anticipated, so it’s taking longer than originally planned.

Watch this space.

Thank you, as ever for taking the time to read this post. If you like what you read, think about subscribing below.

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Hello friends,

Welcome to the first of my new Field Notes newsletters. My intention for these newsletters is for them to act as a sort of commonplace, a space to share things that have been inspiring me, quotes to motivate you to get creative (specifically to get writing), seasonal musings and thoughts on books I’ve read recently.

One of my intentions this year was to try to be more present with life, and gathering my thoughts and inspirations into one place is a small way of showing up for that intention.

Writing update

I managed to get a few more thousand words written on my novel at the end of last year, which felt good, and the passion is bubbling away just under the surface.

Over the last month or so I’ve spent some time upgrading my Scrivener and moving everything across, organising my WIP into clear chapters and sections. This has been immeasurably helpful in getting back into it - not least because I am, at heart, a slightly scatty person; I’ll have notes on chapters strewn across my Google Drive and chapters hiding somewhere in my folders. Organising it all felt like having a Spring clean and sparked the writing bug again.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, the start of the year has been a time of focus on other projects, with little time leftover for writing. Now that those projects are coming to an end, I find myself with a little more time to get into a creative flow and have found myself engaging more with my creative process.

I’ve also been really called back to short stories again. There is something enticing about them, a freedom that comes from the limited word count of a short story that intrigues me, and I find them a really useful way of writing something without too much pressure.

I’m totally intrigued by short story writers (and have been since taking Joyce Carol Oates’ Masterclass on short stories), and find there to be something mysterious and slightly subversive about the whole genre.

I have so many ideas for short stories that the temptation to get them written down does pull my attention from the novel. I’m choosing to see it all as writing practice, though, which can’t be a bad thing.

Pockets of inspiration

I often find a word of inspiration or a thought-provoking image can give me the spark I need to get writing, and I like to save them away in my files for a rainy day. Think of these pockets of inspiration as my files opening, to share just with you.

Writing, like many creative pursuits, can be a labour of love and I do find my sense of creativity sometimes going for a distant wander. These snippets are ones that I’ve come across recently to help it find me again more quickly. A few of the quotes below have been shared by London Writer’s Salon Writer’s Hour, so thank you to those that are shared on there.

The job of an apple tree is to bear apples. The job of a storyteller is to tell stories...I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.

James A. Michener, Writer's Handbook

This quote below from Shakti Gawain really spoke to me when I came across it in an LWS newsletter, and is something I have spoken of a few times across my newsletters; that is the never-ending quest to find yourself and to find your own creative path.

Writing is one of the things that has helped me get more in touch with who I am, and every time I read something relating to ‘finding one’s genius’ it gives me the small reminder to keep writing so I can discover more.

Towards the end of last year I discovered Miranda Mills - Youtuber, Substacker, book lover, and someone who shares her own snippets of seasonality and country living. After discovering her I promptly picked up her book, The Country Commonplace, and it has been by my bedside ever since. I pick it up at least a couple of times a week, flipping through a few pages and allowing myself a few moments to read about the season we’re in.

Seasons of Story by Miranda Mills

Seasons of Story is an online literary journal and community, devoted to books, art, creativity and seasonal delights. Welcome!

I like to try and look for writing inspiration every day, and there’s nothing like a walk in the countryside to get my creative juices flowing. It’s incredible what a blast of fresh air can do for clearing out the mental cobwebs and if I am in a creative funk I can guarantee a 30 minute stroll will help to get things flowing again. The picture below was taken on a walk in January; the sun barely got above where it’s pictured here, and there was an incredible mist hovering over the hills of Hampshire.

… quote attributed to Picasso towards the end of his life...he was asked by a young student who said ‘why do you still go to your studio every day to work?’ His reply was ‘when inspiration arrives I want it to find me working’.

Now that’s what writing’s about... You’re not inspired all of the time, you’re not energized all of the time, it’s not going well all of the time... but you always keep going, You just keep putting word after word after word on a page and then you’ve got a paragraph and then you’ve got a chapter. And it doesn’t matter if you then the next day go ‘oh my Lord, what was I thinking’, cut it all out again. You just never give in. You just keep going.

Kate Mosse, London Writer’s Salon Podcast

What I’ve been Reading

The Great Gatsby

This was one of my first reads of 2026 and a re-read, and I have to say that reading it again for the first time in many years was a completely different experience. The first time I read it I didn’t quite get it. I found it a bit boring, in all honesty, and I recall it taking me a while to get through.

Oh how age and time changes things!

I loved it on a re-read and sped through it. I read this after the next book in this list, Persuasion, which while is a short book in terms of number of pages, has fairly small writing which extends the reading progress (for me - I’m not a particularly fast reader). The Great Gatsby, however, is much shorter and the copy I have (this one) has large font, which made reading it really easy.

I found myself pulled along the story this time, the atmosphere throughout was somewhat unsettling, the characters felt rounded and interesting and the narrative voice, that of Nick Carraway, felt very human.

Persuasion

This was the first book I ever read from Jane Austen many moons ago and I remember being surprised by how much more light-hearted and informal her writing style was. I always thought classics had to be serious and difficult, and this was the first one that felt accessible in a way I hadn’t expected.

Reading it again in 2026, and knowing a lot more about Jane Austen’s works, I found I took a lot more from the meaning behind what she was writing about. Persuasion is a story of lost love, of quiet longing. It’s about Anne; wise, inwardly strong, well-mannered Anne whose family disregards her and yet who carries herself with more dignity than any of them could manage.

It’s a story of love that builds over the 270 pages until Anne and Wentworth find their way back to each other in the most Austen way possible (take from that what you will). If you’ve not read Austen before, I’d personally say it’s a great place to start.

The Fourth Wing Series

You know I like to keep it real with a mix of classics and contemporary, and I was intrigued to see if the hype around these books was worth it. You know what, I’m enjoying it! I had a slow start with Fourth Wing, coming off the back of the two books above it felt like a rapid change in direction, but once I’d realigned to the writing style and voice, I actually loved this. I’m not a romantasy girlie (but maybe I am, who knows!), but I liked the characters, I liked the world, I loved Tairn and Andarna and I sped through what is a hefty book pretty quickly.

I’m currently half way through Iron Flame and there has been a lot of politics and journeying through the whole war thing that’s going on, but it has been a good chance to get to know some characters better. I am finding the whole relationship with the two main characters - namely the falling out they’ve had over trust - a little but tenuous and draggy, but I do find myself looking forward to going to bed so I can read it, so it must be doing something right!

The Handmaid’s Tale

An absolute classic from our pal Margaret Atwood, this was another re-read and another that I enjoyed even more so for it. The characters, the atmosphere, the politics and history - it’s an absolutely brilliant read and deserves to be read not just watched.

🌸On my Spring reading list🌸

Emma by Jane Austen

Evenings and Weekends by Oisin McKenna

Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros (I have to finish the series now I’ve started it!)

Some short stories from Joyce Carol Oates’ High Lonesome

The two following books are next up in my 2026 guide to Becoming Intentionally Well Read (I skipped ahead and read The Handmaid’s Tale instead of East of Eden, a choice I will forever regret for now technically being behind!)

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Have you read any of the above, what’s on your reading list for springtime? Let me know below :)!📕

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Substacks I’ve been loving

Serious Literary Author: if you’re looking for funny yet painfully on-the-nose observations, Serious Literary Author needs to be top of your subscribe list. I have actually cackled out loud while reading his posts on the train. His writing is the absolute peak of sarcastic wit and literary satire in the best way. It gives unreliable narrator to the extreme and I urge you to give him a read.

Starting with The Best of Daniel Piper seems like a good place to recommend:

Serious Literary Author

The Best of Daniel Piper

Dear littérateurs…

Read more

6 months ago · 848 likes · 51 comments · Daniel Piper

Proof of Life: I’ve loved reading Grace’s newsletters and even though she often writes about motherhood - something I do not have experience of - I still find myself moved by her words. She writes poetically and in a way I wish I could, capturing details from life that might often pass us by.

Proof of Life

what opened

There is a particular quality of light that I did not have access to before…

Read more

5 months ago · 9 likes · 4 comments

Finally, some writing inspiration from A Space to Write on YouTube on writing dialogue. This is a quick and easy activity you can do to understand better the power of words and word choice.

I’d love to hear what you’ve been getting up to recently - what’s been inspiring you, what have you been reading, what’s on your reading list? Let me know - I’d truly love to hear.

I’ve loved collating this post and will be continuing to share snippets each month on writing progress, book updates and creative inspiration. Until then, have a relaxing, wonderful Sunday.

If you would like to support my newsletter, sharing it with someone who might enjoy it would be a wonderful thing to do - thank you.

Share On Wednesdays We Write

I’ve realised something about myself over the last few years: I am completely useless at hobbies at the start of the year. I took a little break from writing because I was firmly in winter hibernation mode, and it’s a pattern that’s become pretty familiar.

I tend to go all in on things in the lead-up to Christmas (see: Substackmas), and end the year feeling a little burnt out. Then January rolls around, I throw myself back into my ‘actual’ job, and suddenly anything that requires a bit more creativity - like writing - feels much harder to return to.

But now that the days are getting lighter and the New Year fog has lifted, I’m ready to get back to what I love - being here.

The start of the year has also come with a fairly chunky side quest: a full-blown kitchen renovation that my partner and I (in our infinite wisdom) decided to take on almost entirely ourselves. Seven consecutive weekends later, the house has been a dust-covered chaos cabin (truly - living without a kitchen is brutal), and it hasn’t left much room - mentally or physically - for writing, even if I had been feeling ready.

I have been brewing a post that will be out in the next few days on Persuasion by Jane Austen - the first in my companion newsletter series - and I’m keen to share some writing updates soon (though that may mostly consist of “I’ve not done a lot”).

This week’s post, however, is something a little different. It’s not about writing or reading, but a bit of a rant - one that’s been sitting in my head for a while - about standards for women, and finding value in ourselves past the aesthetic.

I went on holiday in early February and decided to stick some fake nails on. For two days after I returned, I tip-tapped away on my keyboard and struggled to type accurately, my long-ish nails inadvertently hitting the ‘e’ when I meant to type a ‘d’, a ‘j’ when I was aiming for an ‘n’, and so on. After one too many emails that looked like they’d been typed with my elbows, and before I spiralled into a full-blown nail-induced meltdown, I yanked them off and went about my day with bare nails, as is most often my preference.

Looking at my nails in their naked, natural glory I was reminded of a post I once had the unfortunate luck to come across online, one that has irritatingly risen out of the depths of my long-term memory many times since. For the purposes of this newsletter I hunted The Internet for it and I bring to you the ~2020s version of female belittlement:

It made me want to shrivel up and escape this hellscape we call Earth.

When a woman’s worth (actual, monetary worth) is being assessed solely on whether or not she has her nails done, you know that we, as a society, have gotten ourselves into a pickle. There are many factors at play when it comes to how we judge others, but what struck me about this post, and why it’s stayed with me, is that it was just a cheap way of assigning value to women. As if we don’t already have enough of those.

As with most things online, it’s inciting division and mean-spiritedness, let alone being hypocritical (but that’s just another random Tuesday on TikTok, isn’t it?). I say hypocritical because I could place a fairly confident bet that most of the women who were agreeing with this post in the comments probably simultaneously post about International Women’s Day and how important it is to lift women up. When it comes to judging and belittling women, unfortunately, women appear to be the primary suspects (without delving into the murky depths of The Manosphere. Let’s not go there today).

We live in an age where controversy gets views, comments and shares, but at what cost? It might seem like a fairly innocuous rage bait post about assessing women on their outward appearance, but what it really is, is a dangerous, and unnecessary, message to be spreading to women, about women. I will note here that I’m not someone who gets their nails done, so perhaps I have taken this somewhat personally (but it’s my newsletter so I can write about it if I want to!), but personal feelings aside, I fear we’ve lost touch with reality.

We’ve let aesthetics become a proxy for values.

How someone looks and whether or not they have a manicure means we can instantly judge them for who they are. And at a basic level it makes sense. As human beings we instinctively and subconsciously mould ourselves to the idea of what we need to look like to fit in. We want to be included. But posts like this - ones in which we outrightly spread judgment and hate - are just giving high school bully, you-can’t-sit-with-us.

I have two nieces who, at 9 and 11, are at the age where comments like this might mean they start demanding salon manicures from their already overworked and overstretched parents. If they aren’t allowed, or simply don’t have a Mum and Dad who can bank roll a monthly manicure, are they going to start being judged, too?

Unfortunately, we are talking primarily about women here. Men don’t get judged for not having their nails done. They don’t get judged (as much) as women do for how they look and how they present themselves. And posts like this only exacerbate the issue.

As well as the hundreds of comments of women providing valid reasons why they choose not to get their nails done, ranging from ‘I can’t because I work in healthcare’ to ‘I literally couldn’t GAF’, there were also many comments similar to those screenshotted above - reverse judgment, you might call it. What it boils down to, in my opinion, is pitting women against each other.

In this economy?

This article by Refinery 29 was an interesting read about nail privilege, and it highlights one really key fact: “…influencer culture plays a large part in the pressure to look groomed at all times, but here’s the thing: Most influencers get their beauty treatments for free.”

Prices for everything are at an all time high: essentials like fuel, groceries, prescriptions, basic personal care items, transport; they’re all wildly expensive. Let alone little luxuries like a takeaway coffee (coffee shops charging upwards of £6 for a takeaway coffee????), eating out, going to the cinema, the nice butter instead of the supermarket own. It has all gotten a little out of control, and the increase in wages is woefully lagging behind. So, yes, actually, perhaps more women are choosing to forgo their manicure so they can put food on the table.

And instead of collectively coming together to acknowledge that it’s really hard, we’re judging women for not spending money… in a time when spending money is objectively harder than ever.

As this commenter said, it’s just nasty:

But my other question/worry is this: If all you have to do is spend your time looking at others and trying to make assumptions about them, what does it say about you? Perhaps it says it’s time to look for a hobby. Posts like this continue to exacerbate the already incredibly high bars women have to reach to be deemed ‘worthy’, so perhaps instead of making an automatic judgment on how much money someone has based on whether their nails are painted, we could engage some critical thinking and consider whether it’s a helpful thought to be encouraging.

Has everybody lost their individuality?

Perhaps it’s less about the nails, and more about how readily people follow trends and give up their individualism for a hope that they’ll fit in or reach an apparent lifestyle. Certainly, we’re more prone to being influenced on what we should like or what we should buy nowadays. Advertising (a lot of it free) is at its peak and social media has made what was once a world of individuals increasingly homogenous. The Algorithm has meant you’ll see the same content repeated in slightly different ways thirty times before breakfast. It feels like seeing the same woman 50 times selling you the same lifestyle. So, in many ways it’s hard to blame the individual for starting to believe that having their nails done a certain way will lead them to a certain type of life.

But the issue is that there’s a distinct lack of understanding of what is actually happening: that we’re being sold an aesthetic and mistaking it for an identity.

We start to believe that if we have our nails done in the same way as the people we see online, then our lives will start to look like theirs too. We start to believe we’ll be more accepted - but by who? By people in our actual, real lives? Or by people we see online who we don’t actually know? Who are we seeking validation from?

When everyone has the same nails / same outfits / same routines, who is left? If we strip back the aesthetics, what’s left of people?

I’m not sure where the balance is, either. There’s aspiring to a life you dream of living, and there’s getting yourself into debt to have a superficial version of it today. The nails could be representative of so many other things. Things that people (and please know I am including myself in this, very few people are immune to the powers of social media marketing) believe - consciously, subconsciously - will make their lives better if only they buy it. I could enter a loooong list of the types of things I’ve seen online that lead to this sort of hysteria: the Stanley cup, the Parke sweatshirts, the 20-step skincare routine, the $30 gratitude journal, the $60 health supplement that tastes like grass. It’s all about consumption in the hopes of living a life that, quite frankly, we know deep down doesn’t really exist.

I fear that social media is teaching our younger generations that what we should aspire to is simply to look a certain way, in the hope that the lifestyle will follow. Nails done, morning shed done, Bloom at lunch (IYKYK)…so on and so forth. What we need to remember is it’s all (mostly) an illusion.

It is sad that still, in 2026, women are being judged based on outward appearances. Why don’t we try judging people by their achievements, their merit, or simply by who they are.

As the Refinery 29 article poignantly ends on “Manicure or no manicure, one thing is true: Nails certainly don’t dictate our worth.”

Here’s what I think we should actually be aspiring towards

You know who has really inspired me recently - Hannah Fry. She’s a Professor of Mathematics, an “accidental broadcaster” (her words) and an all round nice person. Insanely clever, really funny, and able to make complex things understandable. Do I recall whether or not she had her nails done in this recent documentary series I watched? No, I couldn’t tell you. Do I care? Also no. Because that’s not where her value lies and it’s not what makes people pay attention.

This is a woman who has talent, depth and wisdom and is the sort of person I want my nieces to be aspiring towards. Living a life that engages with social media in a meaningful way, a life that’s full of learning and discovery and trying out new things. A life that follows your passions and isn’t apologetic for it. A life that inspires creativity and individuality.

I’m trying to be careful here with not saying that getting your nails done is good or bad - it’s neither. What I am saying is that there’s more to life than nails. And the more time we spend mistaking aesthetics for identity, the further we drift from figuring out who we actually are.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and if you enjoyed it feel free to share it with others who might too. I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts on this topic, and would be delighted to hear from you in the comments.

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My first companion newsletter will be coming out on Monday, as part of my 2026 Guide to Becoming Intentionally Well-Read. It’s Jane Austen’s Persuasion, so if you’ve read it, are thinking about reading it, or are interested to learn a little more about the book, then stay subscribed and stay cool.

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If you enjoyed this post, then please share it with someone else who might too. And while you’re there, check out these posts below:

We’re always thinking about what we’ll become.

As children, it’s “I’ll be this when I’m older.” As teenagers, it’s “What career do you want to go into?” And now, as adults, it’s a steady barrage of self-help: be the person you want to be, optimise your life, become the most successful, productive, fulfilled - insert preferred buzzword here - version of yourself.

Dream big. Be consistent. Improve yourself. Your future self is waiting.

The underlying message is hard to ignore: who you are right now is not enough.

I decided to stop listening to that. On a day when everyone and your mother will be posting their 2026 goals and encouraging you to plan your year, let this post be a brief, gentle reminder that you don’t need to do any of it (if you don’t want to).

I myself have decided to be happy with who I am right now. Not as a placeholder version of myself, not as a work in progress waiting to become “better”, but as me, right now, enjoying life. It’s something I’ve been doing for my sanity, and I’m carrying into the new year.

Over the last couple of years, I started noticing that the more I fixated on a hypothetical dream life (yes, the countryside homestead still makes frequent appearances and yes it will happen one day), the less present and happy I was feeling in my actual one. I was allowing days to pass me by dreaming of other things, all the while missing out on the joys of what I had now.

I kept thinking that once I had x or y or z then I would sit down and write, bake, garden, read Tolstoy or any of the other long list of things I believed only belonged to the future (therefore, non-existent) version of myself. I was denying myself the joy of doing those things because I felt my life wasn’t perfect.

I’d set goals for myself that weren’t based on what I truly wanted to do, but a strange mix of things I saw other people putting on their lists and things I only felt partway ‘qualified’ to aim for. I guess, then, that this post is part ‘you don’t need to improve yourself’ and part ‘you can put whatever you bloody want on your goals list because you deserve it’. I, for example, wouldn’t have dreamt of claiming ‘write a book’ as a goal a few years ago because that felt like something that existed only for other people.

Me? Have the audacity to try and write a book? Never! That’s only available for me when I have this or this or this!

It’s exhausting. Always waiting for something to change, always pinning your hopes on one day feeling ready to start doing the thing you want to do. Never quite feeling good enough because you believe only the future you is complete and whole and ready.

Goals shouldn’t be about you vs. the you who’s done it/got it.

Because there is joy to be found in wanting to improve your life in some way, but not at the expense of who you are now. While goals can often make me feel stressed and pressured I do enjoy the process of sitting down and thinking about some of the things I would like to achieve. I’m just a walking, talking contradiction me.

But it has come to be less goal-setting and more life-building - putting in habits that may or may not work towards bigger goals. Two quotes I often return to:

“If you want to have self-esteem, do esteemable things.” Jennifer Garner, Vogue (random, I know).

“We are what we repeatedly do.” (there’s more to this one, but this part is what often sticks with me), Aristotle

We are what we repeatedly do. That’s it, it’s that simple. If you want to write, write. If you want to climb a mountain, climb a mountain. If you want to be the sort of person who runs every morning, do you know what you have to do? Run every morning.

Man, don’t we overcomplicate it sometimes?

“One day I will write a book.”

That’s what I would always say to myself, never actually doing anything to make it happen.

Ok, so what’s stopping you now?

“Oh well I need a new laptop/keyboard, I need to read that book or do that course first.”

Ok, here you go.

“Well, I’m going away in a few weeks and don’t want to get going until I have proper time to focus.”

Ok, you’re back from holiday now.

“I don’t have the right desk setup, I can’t focus.”

Do you get the point - there will always be something stopping you. The excuses can be endless, if you let them. (In particular, the excuses/procrastination that can happen around the goal-setting itself. Don’t let planning and goal-prepping be the thing that makes you feel like you’ve started. The goal only gets done when you do it).

There is a true transformation that happens when you begin to understand that one day will only ever become to-day if you do something, if you change something and stop daydreaming.

We have the power, right now, to make one day today. (I know I’m getting very motivational speaker-y on you here).

This past year has been about doing exactly that; doing the things I want to do right now, rather than leaving them only for a future version of myself to enjoy. Does any of this make sense?

Instead of big lifestyle goals that will only make you think you’ve got it all together when you reach it, a goal that’s about small changes in your habits, your daily life, they’re the ones that I’ve learnt make a real difference.

My recent post, The 2026 Guide to Becoming Intentionally Well-Read, came from exactly that place: a genuinely exciting, manageable commitment that’s not just about achieving a goal of reading certain books, but building a habit of reading closely that will improve my overall breadth of understanding. It’s about living and breathing the things I have always put off for my future self now, not just ticking off things I think I should do.

So, with that in mind, here are a few gentle intentions for 2026 - not to reinvent myself, but to continue showing up deliberately.

My Gentle 2026 Intentions

#1 Finish my novel

I gave myself six months to finish my novel last year. In 2026, I’m doubling that. It turns out writing your first book takes a lot of time - who knew? I was clearly being very optimistic.

My birthday is in June (9th - put it in your diaries) and I’d love to have it almost completed by then, to be able to start on the editing.

That will be roughly 10,000 words a month. A bit of a tall order with a busy start to the year including completely renovating a kitchen, but why not, eh?

What feels good about this goal is that I’m not obsessed with getting to the finishing point because I know so much of the enjoyment of the goal will be in the doing it. In continuing writing habits I’ve already developed, so it doesn’t feel like a huge challenge but a continuation of who I have been becoming - a writer.

#2 Weekly Newsletters

Continue my Substack newsletters.

I am beyond proud to have (almost) stuck to my weekly writing schedule in 2025 with one newsletter every week and my goal is to continue this. If it’s every two weeks sometimes, I’m ok with that too. Life happens, and I don’t want this to become a chore.

Again, this isn’t a ‘When I reach this goal I’ll feel better’. It’s an ongoing habit that I’ve been developing that encourages me to write regularly and document snippets of my life on here.

#3 Read more closely/improve critical thinking

If you saw my post The 2026 Roadmap to Becoming Obscenely Well-Read, this was me making it public so I can’t quietly back out later.

The gentle goal is to tick off a few classics and modern classics on my TBR and to really deep dive into them, sharing some analysis and thoughts with you as I go.

I will be publishing a monthly newsletter to go along with each one that will include my reflections on the book and deeper insights into themes, largely for my own benefit, but you’re very welcome to join me.

#4 Grow more food and use it

I’ve grown (pun intended) a real passion for gardening over the last five-ish years and have successfully grown a few vegetables here and there, but I often find I’m thrilled to have grown a courgette or a carrot, but never get round to doing anything with it.

This needs to change.

Preserving, canning, finding more adventurous ways to use crops up - this is a big focus for 2026. Perhaps you’ll see some wonky veg showing up on your feed come summer.

A message from me to you

2025 was a weird year for me with quite a lot of work-related anxiety, and if yours was a little strange too, I am sending genuine well-wishes for a great 2026.

Do things because you want to do them - not because you saw someone else doing them first.

And finally, something I try to remind myself of when it comes to goals: remember why you started. Shiny-thing syndrome is real, and the initial excitement of any goal is always motivating.

I often come back to the fact that I want to write this book because it’s a dream I’ve carried for decades. The slow slog of writing can make me want to stop at times, but, as they say, the time will pass regardless and I’d rather spend it giving it a real chance.

Thank you for reading, I wish you a very happy new year and I’d love to know your thoughts on goal-setting, as well as sharing anything you will be doing in 2026!

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Thank you, as ever, for taking the time to read this post. If you’d like to support me on my writing journey, you can find me on Instagram, buy me a coffee, or subscribe!

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There’s a shift going on at the moment - a shift away from digital towards physical media and slow, more intentional engagement with what we’re consuming. I’ve seen it across many social media platforms recently, Substack included, and have had multiple conversations about it IRL over the past few months - and I am here for it.

For me, this desire for intentionality hasn’t been sudden. It’s been a slow accumulation of feelings and circumstances over the last few years, gradually leading me to crave deeper connection and engagement with my own life. Going into 2026, it feels like I’m finally beginning to understand what that craving is really about. I talked a little more about this in the post below:

This reading challenge, which I’ll explain properly shortly, isn’t really about reading more books. Reading is only one small part of something bigger: to understand myself better; to engage more intentionally with my thoughts, my ideas, and the world around me and to be more mindful about how I move through life.

It’s an answer to a calling that has been brewing within, spurred on by the incredible inspiration I see from others carving out their own way of life; at a slower pace, with a more intentional presence, with authenticity and integrity. Writing on here has been something of a catalyst for this; it has helped me to reflect more on what I’m thinking, writing about thoughts, feelings, books, the world - it has all helped me to feel more tuned in to what’s going on in and around me. It is also a call to arms against the throwaway society we have come to live in, one where trends come and go in minutes, where we are inundated with ideas and opinions, where we value surface level attributes over deep connection with each other and with creativity, the arts.

So if you, too, are craving a deeper connection with yourself, this might be the post and challenge for you.

I would like to pause a moment here to comment on the title of this challenge, ‘becoming well-read’. I call it this purely as a catchy title - I don’t believe that to be considered ‘well-read’ you have to have read any of the books I will be mentioning in this post. Reading well means to read something you enjoy. For me, engaging more deeply with what I’m reading is something I want to do for fun - it’s certainly not a prerequisite for picking up a book and enjoying the process.

I am, primarily, a writer. I am writing my first full-length novel, currently sat at around 15,000 words (long way to go), but on my writing journey I am discovering a few things:

1. I love reading. This is not, in fact, a new discovery. I have read for as long as I remember, but in my adulthood is where reading has really become a proper hobby.

2. I love reading to understand more. Up until about four years ago I read for enjoyment and enjoyment alone. A good story with a good plot and good characters was all I needed. But being someone who always enjoyed education, I found myself craving more. A deeper understanding of what I was reading, a desire to be able to contextualise what I was reading, and - egotistically - to want to be able to say ‘Yes, I’ve read that!’ about many of The Classics.

3. Reading widely helps writing. It is advice we’ve heard time and time again, but it only becomes more apparent the more you do it. Reading other books infinitely improves your own writing.

Introducing: The 2026 Guide to Becoming Intentionally Well-Read

A year-long reading challenge focused on reading more slowly, thoughtfully, and intentionally.

The challenge is simple: read one classic book per month and read it closely (I am including modern classics in my definition). This means taking the time to engage fully, thinking not only about what the author explicitly says, but also what lies between the lines. I’m very interested in looking at the bigger structure of the books (being in the middle of writing my own) and examining how stylistic choices can impact the narrative. As well as this, something I really want to get from this challenge is understanding more how the historical context shapes texts, how the books might have impacted readers at the time, and the intertextual connections that provide so much hidden context.

To do this, there are a few simple steps I’ll be following and you’re invited to follow along too:

1. Annotate the book as I read, including my own thoughts and feelings, as well as highlighting snippets that may be important contextually

2. Spend 15-30 minutes after finishing the book answering the questions outlined here

3. Craft a mini-essay on one theme or idea from the book (more on this below)

Here on Substack, I’ll be writing companion newsletters which will include additional resources as well as my own mini essay, along with a further reading list which will include books related to or connected with the book we’ve explored that month, for anyone who wants to dive a little deeper.

The books

The list that follows isn’t a definitive canon, nor is it a syllabus in the currently trending sense of the word. It’s simply a collection of books that are considered classics and that I am feeling drawn to add to my read list by the end of the year.

These are novels that have endured not because they are perfect, but because they continue to invite conversation. They might ask questions about identity, morality, class, love, power, belief, or life itself. Reading them with intentionality and a critical eye will, I hope, open up a much bigger conversation (in my mind, with you, with the world), and that’s really exciting.

You’re very welcome to follow along exactly, to dip in and out, or to use this list simply as a guide for your own intentionally well-read year.

The books are shared below and also here, in the roadmap guide.

• Persuasion

• The Great Gatsby

• East of Eden

• Beloved

• I Capture the Castle

• Hunger

• Norwegian Wood

• Wide Sargasso Sea

• Giovanni’s Room

• The Haunting of Hill House

• Anna Karenina

• The Handmaid’s Tale

Expectations

I am not a scholar. I didn’t take English Literature at school (as I wrote about here!) or university, so the mini essays I write would not be described as critical. Instead, I’m learning as you learn, so rather than pretending to know more than I do - or simply re-stating interpretations that already exist - I’ll be leaning heavily on the insights of those far better placed to help us understand these books. My role here is not to reinvent the wheel, but to gather, reflect, and respond thoughtfully using my own interpretations.

I love learning, and I hold a dream of one day undertaking a Master’s degree focused on literature or writing. This year of close, intentional reading feels like a meaningful way to explore whether that path is one I’d like to pursue.

With this in mind, here are a few videos I have found particularly useful to get started on reading classics/hard books:

The On Wednesdays We Read Book Club

On the second Wednesday of each month, I’ll be publishing a companion newsletter and mini essay reflecting on the previous month’s book. Think of it as your internet book-club without having to actually turn up anywhere or interact with anyone (bliss). You’re welcome to read along with me, catch up on my thoughts alongside your own, and engage with the ideas the novel has sparked using this set of questions designed to prompt deeper thinking and reflection (this is loosely what my newsletter updates will be based around).

Mini Essays

I would also encourage you, if you want to engage more with what you’re reading, to craft your own mini essays: short, informal pieces shaped around a single idea or question that emerges while reading. I came across this concept in detail from Odysseus who has a few great videos on how and why you should do it. He also has a great newsletter that, if you enjoy this sort of content, you’ll love - check it out.

A mini essay doesn’t need to be time-consuming. He suggests setting aside just 20–30 minutes and under 500 words. Rather than only relying on your annotations or notes in a journal, a mini essay asks you to gather your thoughts into a somewhat coherent narrative so you can clarify what you think, notice what you don’t yet understand, and sit a little longer with the ideas that matter. While annotation is great, it can make you feel as though you’re doing something, without actually taking much of it to heart. A mini essay gives you some space to bring it all together.

There’s no pressure to publish these pieces or perfect them. The value lies in the thinking itself.

The first book we will be reading is Persuasion by Jane Austen. I have already begun reading this and creating the first companion newsletter to enable time to publish this on time on January 14th 2026.

If you’d like to join me, subscribe below to keep up to date:

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A Gentle Manifesto for Becoming Intentionally Well-Read

I want to close this off by reiterating: this is not about reading more. I’ve tried that, setting myself outlandish Goodreads goals that only set off panic and pressure. This is no longer what I crave.

It is about reading with care.

It is about slowness, attention, and presence.

It is an invitation to read attentively and to begin to rewire your brain away from quick fix dopamine hits and towards meaningful, deep interactions with the content you consume. So much of what we (I) see and read online shapes our opinions before we’ve had time to form our own and one of the core reasons for undertaking this challenge is to push back against that, to form my own opinions, with some contextual guidance from outside resources about the books I’m reading.

You may read one book or many, abandon what no longer serves you, and return to what does. All of this counts.

That is enough.

Thank you for reading, and if I don’t see you before then, Happy New Year.

Sophie

Thank you, as ever, for taking the time to read this post.

Hello,

How are you doing?

Recently, I’ve been trying to break the habit of letting the working week blur into one big mass of work, tv and sleep. That’s not an easy feat when darkness falls before 4pm, and all I want to do after a day spent sending emails and listening to calls and fielding questions is cry curl up on the sofa and veg. But I’m happy to say I have a new soul-nourishing addition: the evening my partner and I venture outside to go for a walk and wander around the city of Winchester with a coffee in hand.

We began our new weekly ritual in early Autumn, just as dusk started settling a little earlier each day. A time to decompress and break up the often-felt monotony of the working week. Too many evenings spent exhausted, slumped on the sofa watching something neither of us particularly cared for. Tv programs or films that added nothing but took away plenty. Feeling restless and unproductive, we set about bringing more joy into the week, and these little walks have become just that.

Each week, we choose an evening to go on our midweek date. This is made harder by nightfall drawing in at about 4pm, and the lure of the warmth of a blanket and the comfort of a soft seat tempting us to call it off. Instead, we go, knowing it will refresh our minds and give us space to be together - to chat about the world, about the plans we have for the future, and to make the most of the place we live.

We grab a coffee (essential), and as winter has descended this has changed from a simple black americano to an indulgent latte with festive flavours - I can’t help myself when coffee shops bring out the gingerbread syrup - and make our way along the main street to walk the banks of the river Itchen; a river that runs from the beautiful small town of Alresford down towards the coastline of Southampton. For a few weeks now the twinkling lights of Christmas have been helping to light the way, making me feel like I’m living inside The Holiday.

The Christmas market cropped up at the beginning of December, and we’ve spent an evening each week wandering the market stalls, eating a bratwurst (him) or a French Comte (me). Last week’s excursion led us to Boba Moon where I had the most delicious croffle, an experience I felt I had to share with you here:

We’re trying not to make the evening adventures about food, but this was too good to pass by. If you ever come across somewhere selling them, I urge you to get one (in the strongest possible terms).

I’ve written before about my dream of living closer to places that make this kind of life easier. A life of spontaneous walks through lush countryside, rather than through the early-2000s housing estates to which we have become accustomed. Making our tracks in village lanes and winding jitties (although, let’s be real, they probably don’t have many croffle shops). I grew up in a village in Lincolnshire, so the pull back to small village living is strong. The bright lights of London don’t hold the same appeal they once did and instead, I find myself dreaming instead of Yorkshire stone or Cotswold cottages, warm village pubs, and sheep for neighbours.

My weekday walks bring this feeling to me in small pockets.

Help me buy another croffle

10 Simple Winter Joys

1. Christmas tree lights

2. Snacky dinners

3. The thrill of buying a new diary for the year ahead

4. Christmas Hallmark movies

5. Early morning frost melting off the grass

6. A new Winter coat

7. Muddy boots after a long walk

8. Frosty pub windows

9. Time to hibernate

10. Dark mornings spent writing

    ---

A few Winter poems:

The Firewood Poem

Winter Trees

Pushing forty, Alison Fell:

Just before winter

we see the trees show

their true colours:

the mad yellow of chestnuts

two maples like blood sisters

the orange beech

braver than lipstick

Pushing forty, we vow

that when the time comes

rather than wither

ladylike and white

we will henna out hair

like Colette, we too

will be gold and red

and go out

in a last wild blaze

Thank you for reading this post. There’s something wonderfully melancholic about winter, and in recent years I’ve come to appreciate the beauty of each season in its own right. I’m looking forward to noticing how our evening walks begin to feel different as winter gives way to spring, and eventually to summer - which, at the moment, feels a very long way off.

I’d love to know if you’ve got any small, simple joys to share that are helping you through the darker months (here in the northern hemisphere anyway!)

For more on Wintery goodness:

If you’d like to support me on my writing journey, you can find me on Instagram, buy me a book, or subscribe or upgrade your subscription!

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Margaret Atwood needs no introduction. She has become a household name and icon. A poet and author, she is an inspiration to many with the words, and worlds, she creates, and has been writing for over 60 years. If you’ve ever watched her during interviews or classes, you’ll know she’s also a very charismatic figure with a somewhat mischievous smile alluding to her seemingly endless creativity and intellectualism.

For me, this year has been one of learning more about writing and how to do it better, and there is no better place to look than to those who have mastered the craft themselves. I’ve been exploring the advice and working habits of some of the great writers of our time, asking: What is it about their writing that captures our attention, makes us want to stay, and ensures we feel something?

This post will share the advice and routines of one of the world’s biggest writers, so keep reading to see what she has to say about the craft. To catch up on my previous articles on writer’s advice you can read about Shirley Jackson, Joyce Carol Oates and Donna Tartt.

On where a book comes from:

“People have been thinking about that for a long time. How do you begin? How do you get into it? I would say that if you’re not finding this happens somewhat spontaneously, you probably shouldn’t be doing this activity [writing].”

About the author

Margaret Atwood was born and raised in Canada, where she still lives in Toronto. Born in 1939, her work spans six decades and often explores themes including:

• power

• gender

• environmental issues

• the relationship between humanity and nature

She is widely regarded as one of the most influential contemporary writers in the English-speaking world and this is why she deserves her place in the Learning from the Heroes series (I’m sure she’s thrilled).

Many of her books sit within the category of speculative fiction, a genre she places under the broader umbrella of Wonder Tales. Within this wider category you’ll find science fiction (e.g. stories of space and time travel) and fantasy (e.g. dragons and magic). Speculative fiction sits alongside these, but slightly apart. These are stories that aren’t based in exact reality - therefore, fantasy - but are not difficult to imagine taking place (think Black Mirror, 1984, Brave New World). As I will go on to discuss, she draws her inspiration from real-world events, so the ‘speculative’ part can often feel very close to home.

Some of her most well-known books include:

• Alias Grace

• The Handmaid’s Tale

• Oryx and Crake

• Hag-seed

• The Blind Assassin

As a person, she is known to be funny and practical, and has often been outspoken on politics, climate change, and women’s rights (much of which influences her work). Despite being an icon of the literary world, she doesn’t take herself too seriously and, according to some sources, prefers not to be seen as some ‘removed literary hero’, but someone grounded in reality.

Before we get on to the lessons, let me know: are you an Atwood fan? What is your work creation of hers?

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What we, as writers, can learn

Notebooks ready? The key learnings from Atwood…

Lesson #1: Collect clippings and snippets of the world

Margaret Atwood’s work is often concerned with what could happen in the world around us. Thought-provoking and sometimes uncomfortable, her writing offers readers a glimpse of futures shaped by power, control, and human behaviour. Rather than imagining these worlds from nothing, Atwood draws heavily on real-world events.

She is known for keeping clippings from newspapers and magazines and using these to inspire her work. These collected snippets became a major source of inspiration for her best-known novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood said here that no detail in this book was included unless there was a real-life example for it (often more than one). Perhaps not outrightly so, but with Atwood’s careful and powerful prose, she managed to extrapolate on real-world happenings to create an altogether terrifying version of reality.

So the first lesson to writers is this: pay attention. Collect what you notice. The world is already offering you so much material to work with, you just have to observe and save it.

Lesson #2: Writing is work - inspiration follows commitment

While many of us here - myself included - write as a hobby, Atwood stresses that it should be treated as a serious practice if you really want to produce anything substantial. She is herself famously pragmatic about writing. She treats it as something you show up for, rather than wait to feel ready for. For her, discipline, routine, and persistence matter more than waiting for the right mood.

I really admire this approach and have been trying to live with this mentality while developing my writing practice this year. I used to wait for inspiration to strike, believing that the best writers were simply those who had flashes of inspiration and could create masterpieces at lightspeed. What I now understand is writing takes work - it takes commitment, it takes showing up to the page even when you don’t feel like you’ve got any creativity to give.

I mean, did I really think someone like Atwood, who has published over sixty works (including novels, poetry collections, short stories, children’s books and graphic novels) could have achieved that output by only writing when she felt like it? Crazy!

The lesson here? Commit to what you love. If you love writing, create a habit of doing it. If you love baking - do it regularly. Whatever you love, stop treating it as a ‘nice to have’ and, instead, let it sit where it deserves - among our must-dos.

Support my writing here (thank you!)

Lesson #3: Don’t be afraid to start again

When asked how long it takes her to write a book, Atwood has said there are no strict rules, no “normal time” for a book to be completed. Some books take years; others come together more quickly. Often, she has explained, she will begin a project only to realise she has started on the wrong foot. And so she starts again. Sometimes more than once.

This is something I’ve found to be true in my own writing this year, and it’s something I’ve seen echoed by many successful authors: the place we think the story should begin is not always where it actually should begin. Most often, only through the act of writing or editing can we start to see the true beginning and end.

Oates talked about this in her Masterclass on writing the short story. In one of her workshops, she moved a paragraph of a student’s story from the middle to the beginning and completely reframed (and made better, I might add) the writing. The whole piece made more sense. This wisdom through experience is something we can all aspire to develop.

Sometimes, of course, you get lucky and begin in exactly the right place, and the writing happens more quickly as a result. But the lesson here is this: don’t be afraid to start again if something isn’t working. You might feel stuck not because the story isn’t worth writing, but because you haven’t yet found the right place to begin.

Lesson #4: Adopt a manual writing technique first

You’ll see a pattern if you’ve caught up with my previous posts in this series, as they’ve all said that their writing process begins with handwriting their stories. Atwood said in this interview (and other places) that she writes with pen and paper before transferring her words to a computer.

I have been surprised how often this technique is referenced. Of course, when Atwood, Jackson and Oates began their writing careers computers were not widely available, so it makes sense that their manuscripts were written by hand, but it is interesting to note that this practice appears to have continued.

I’m sure there are many of us out there who couldn’t fathom writing thousands of words by hand, but having employed this technique more often in the past few months - whether for ideas for my novel or for posts here on Substack - I have found it to be an incredibly useful way of capturing ideas and speeding up the writing process.

Atwood has likened this technique of using both pen & paper and a computer to a ‘rolling barrage’. A rolling barrage is a term used in combat in which a soldier moves forward with the cover of gunfire from his comrades, crouches down during enemy fire, then pushes forward, again under cover of gunfire. This technique, Atwood muses, is how she imagines her transferral of the handwritten to the digital. Her handwritten notes are the pushing forward of the story and the digital transferral is the waiting, ducked down, “while the writing creeps forward.”

Lesson #5: Keep a notebook with you wherever you go

You know I’ve talked about this before and it’s what almost every writer I’ve researched has said consistently - you must have somewhere to write ideas down, otherwise you’ll forget. Atwood once joked in an interview that without a notebook, you might be forced to resort to carving words into your leg with a knife.

As Shirley Jackson put it:

“I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing…”

This quote reminds us how important it is to always have a way of capturing our observations and thoughts on what is happening around us. To reiterate an earlier point, the world is crammed full of interesting, exciting and creative stories - but you need to be able to capture them.

All of the ideas I’ve had this year for short stories have materialised from something I’ve seen or heard, or a random idea that has sprung up while on the train or walking. A couple of times, I’ve not had any way of capturing the thoughts before they fly away, inevitably leading me to forgetting half of them. Don’t be like me.

There we have it, five more lessons from another literary legend. I often think how lucky we are in this digital age to have such wide access to the minds of great creators of the arts, and there is a lot more advice available online from Atwood on her writing process and advice.

If you enjoyed this post, I’d love to hear from you. And to stay up to date with all of my posts - delivered straight into your inbox - subscribe below for free, I’d love to have you here!

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Novel word count: 15,366

If only was as easy as that, Mark Twain, if only.

If I’m honest, I’ve been circling the novel for a few weeks now. Thinking about it, scoping it out, side-eyeing it in my files - then promptly ignoring it and coming here to write a newsletter instead. The bigger it gets, the more daunting it feels, and that’s only at 15,000 words. I can only imagine the state I’ll be in at 60k.

Eventually, you have to have a long hard look at yourself in the mirror don’t you?

So, I accepted that avoidance wasn’t helping and sat my butt down to get on with it. This weekend turned out to be exactly what I needed after putting it off for so long. I spent two solid afternoons at my desk, fleshed out four new scenes, added to existing ones, and organised the entire manuscript (more on that below).

Helpfully, I think I’ve worked out some of the reason I’ve been avoiding it recently: I don’t yet know exactly how everything is revealed at the end. I know what the secrets are and I know what I think I want to happen (maybe, possibly, perhaps). But I haven’t quite figured out the logistics of how the protagonist uncovers it all, which is less than ideal. The novel is a gothic-inspired thriller involving a cursed cathedral and an eager journalist uncovering dark secrets from the past. I’m clear on the mythology (I hope and pray), but less clear on the messy middle bit. That uncertainty has made it easier to keep my distance.

As well as feeling daunted by feelings of the story getting away from me, I spent a good couple of months of this year focusing on learning a little more about the craft of writing. You may recall I took a Masterclass on short stories and enjoyed diving into this genre, however, it did take my momentum away.

As Joyce Carol Oates mentions in the aforementioned Masterclass - and as Stephen King also warns in On Writing - losing momentum can be costly. I think that must be true of any book, but perhaps especially so with a thriller, where the logic and sequencing matter so much. Coming back after a break meant rereading everything I had, which felt like a task in itself, and trying to remember what I’d been thinking when I first got going.

In a thriller, but in any story, making things logical and understandable is obviously key. One mystery uncovered needs to lead, in a logical way, to the next. I desperately want to avoid happy accidents revealing the big breaking point - I want it to be intentional, not convenient (which would be so much easier, let’s be real).

What I’m avoiding like the plague is something along the lines of this…

“She suddenly came across a letter from a decade ago. It was from her mum. It explained why she’d left, and what had happened in the lead up to her disappearance. It was unexpected, but gave her all the answers she needed.”

(my quick attempt at writing something obvious and convenient)

Instead of doing this (which would be really boring, as we all know) my focus is:

• mapping how each discovery realistically leads to the next

• strengthening the relationships between characters that allow information to surface naturally

• resisting the urge to rush to the “good bits”. These are the scenes I already know and have written a skeleton of. I could sit and write these out in full but this would be easy. I need to write the hard bits!

Something I created to help me get back into the story after a break was this worksheet. I needed something to help me get back into the headspace of my story and of the characters, so it might be of use to someone else out there who has had a break for one reason or another. The last section on getting back into the story was the most helpful, in particular the prompts that start with ‘I wonder…’. I ended up creating a whole new scene using this prompt and it really helped me to get going again.

I’ve mentioned in this post that I’ve started using Scrivener to write the book because I was struggling to keep up with where I was in the story only using Google Docs. Thankfully, it has been a real game-changer. I’m really enjoying the way Scrivener is set up and in transferring the work over I’ve been able to add to it, organise it and try to get my head around some of those sticky areas of plot.

Ok, so I haven’t yet finished the draft I said I would 6 months ago (hey, there’s still a couple of weeks to go, miracles do happen…), but I’m proud and happy with where I am. This year I have:

• written over 20% of the book

• committed myself to one big project and stuck with it (for the most part!)

• made a promise to myself to write, and written every bloody week, if not daily!

Next year though I will FINISH MY MANUSCRIPT. You can kick me if I don’t.

Excerpt from Project Water

Below is a short excerpt from Project Water (my WIP). It comes from late in the book, at the point where Mara, the main character, is beginning to piece everything together. Like I said, I know what the plot is, it’s just figuring out all the messy middle to get us there - that’s the hard part! But no one said this would be easy - it’s just one word after another until it makes sense.

It was a fear Mara had avoided for as long as she could. A story she refused to examine too closely.

Her mother had died by suicide when Mara was only a month old. A fact she discovered early in her life and one she had learned to live around rather than with. The pain was manageable only if she didn’t linger on it, if she kept it sealed, untouched. Lately, that had become impossible.

All her life she had felt there was more to her mum’s story than she’d been told. A sensation that something more sinister had taken her away, and Mara knew she was close to uncovering it. Her mum was one of the brides. Married in the cathedral in the very year the sculpture was installed. She wasn’t just a bride, she was the start of it all.

The realisation settled heavily. If it was true, then none of what Mara had uncovered was coincidence. And if that was the case, Emily was in danger.

The pattern was repeating. And if she didn’t intervene, it would happen again.

It was time to break the curse.

Thanks for stopping by to read this update! It feels good to be back in the swing of working on the novel and I’m hoping to keep the momentum going throughout the festive season and into the New Year.

If you’re working on a writing project, let me know how it’s going! How far are you? What’s it about? Has anything been tripping you up lately?

Until next time,

Sophie

To catch up on my previous writing updates, have a look at the posts below:

Hello, a quick post from me today,

It has been six months since I made the decision to start this Substack (actually the second one I’ve had, although that one lasted about two weeks) and as with everything, things evolve and change as we discover more about what we love and about ourselves. I started On Wednesdays We Write as a diary about writing, but it has evolved into something so much more: it has become my space to come and think, a space to discuss the questions of life in a place that feels alive with creativity and discussion.

It will, at its core, still be a place to document my novel writing journey. But over the months, my interests have both broadened and narrowed. I have rediscovered a deep love for reading - not just reading for fun, but reading to learn something: whether that’s something about the book I didn’t know or something about myself.

I have discovered - or at least allowed to reveal itself - what I can only describe as a calling to…nature, mindfulness, integrity, consistency, commitment, the beauty of taking care over what I create, the beauty of what time allows to blossom. This might all sound a bit strange, as though it doesn’t all fit together, but this year I’ve come to treasure a sense of commitment to what I’m doing, and all those other words tie together to create something solid. In nature, seeing how patient it is - each season passing through knowing it’s having its time to shine - has given me some perspective. It has softened the pressure I put on myself to rush, to do everything at once.

I have discovered what feels like the key to creativity, and that’s not something I thought would ever happen. That key has been this - writing. I never knew how much clarity would come from writing my little thoughts down on this corner of the internet, but it has truly been something close to transformational. I’ve written about writing, I’ve written about moving to France, I’ve written about habits and books and how a notebook changed my life. Not all of it has been specific to my big goal - completing my manuscript - but each one has taken me closer to it, in one way or another.

There’s a funny thing that happens to me when I start a project and it gets any sort of traction - like the incredible gathering of over 250 subscribers here. I start overthinking. What I should write, what I think you’d want to read, instead of just writing what comes to mind. I noticed myself starting to believe that the longer the newsletter, the better, when in fact, some of my favourite things to read on here are the quick, personal updates on someone’s life.

So this is my way of having a gentle reset after 6 months - to see what’s working, what feels good, and make sure I’m removing anything that doesn’t.

You may have noticed I’ve had a gentle rebrand to fit better with how I see this newsletter and this is what you can expect as we close out 2025 and head into 2026:

• writing progress and updates

• companion newsletters on the books I’m reading. I’m refraining from calling them essays, as such, but more a place to gather my own thoughts alongside the thoughts of others, resources for wider reading and companion reading lists

• Personal entries about life living in Hampshire and working in London

• Snippets of seasons: reminders to slow down, notice the small joys, and live life more slowly

As well as this, a small introduction to who I am

• My name is Sophie, I’m 35

• I live in the suburbs of a Hampshire town with my partner, Andy, and two cats

• We’re longing to move to the countryside and all being well we will in a couple of years

• I work in training for a large, historic department store in Central London (but obviously dream of writing full time!)

• My happiest place is an early Saturday morning in bed with a coffee, my two cats, a book and no plans

• I’m writing my first novel

So, this is to let you know that in 2026 this newsletter will be trying to be what I originally intended - a personal diary of writing and life, intentionally.

Thank you for reading and for making this year so full of fun, connection and growth.

Sophie

Catch up on some of the past Substackmas posts here:

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the support from everyone here on Substack, and thank you for taking the time to read.

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I’m uploading every other day in December for Substackmas, catch up on day one, day two, day three and day four.

Are you a real reader if you didn’t do it as a kid?

The idea for this newsletter was sparked by a video shared on the The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Substack (which is absolutely filled with incredible resources and information. If you want a free paid subscription for this for 1 month let me know, I have some to give). In the video, author Amy K Green talked about imposter syndrome and how because she wasn’t a ‘book kid’, she felt that she wasn’t allowed in the writer’s club.

It begs the question…what is a writer? What is a reader? And who convinced us that both identities must begin in childhood?

I’ve touched on these questions already in multiple posts, but here I want to examine what not feeling cool enough is and what the perceived exclusion from the ‘reader’ club means when you reach adulthood and discover a passion for reading, writing, or both, and why it always feels like you’re playing catch up.

Let me in the club (Imposter syndrome)

I attended an all girls’ grammar school in which I managed to float somewhere in the middle of friendship groups - not in with the cool group, but not a total nerd either. And in my particular school ecosystem English Literature belonged to the cool girls. The ones who played netball for fun and wore their ties short and their skirts shorter. English Literature was the elite subject, reserved for those who’d already read Jane Eyre and knew it was really about Victorian England’s strict social hierarchy, not just a story of a girl growing up and falling in love.

At the point it came to deciding which subjects to take at A-level, I knew English Literature wasn’t for me - while I liked reading, I never felt sharp enough to join them. The idea of studying literature felt beyond my reach. I was never able to glean the meanings from texts that others seemed able to. The themes, the imagery, the things written between the lines - it all seemed to elude me. To this day, while I love to try and ‘read closely’, I often find myself cringing at the amateurish notes I leave in the margins of my books, picking out only the obvious observations with a rudimentary pencil line or ‘!’ to mark what I think must mean something. Perhaps this is where I’m getting it wrong: I’m focusing too much on trying to do it ‘right’, instead of looking for the things that speak to me. Because if reading is anything, it’s a personal experience, and while doing it this way might not uncover the ‘proper’ meanings others can find, perhaps that’s the point. To reveal something that only I can.

I don’t know what this says about me - that my brain prefers the concrete to the abstract, or that my neural pathways for literary analysis were simply never built. I’m a face-value person: I believe what I’m told, and forget that people often say one thing and mean another. I read a book and take the story, not the in-between parts that add depth and context.

Instead, I opted for what I viewed at the time as the dunce’s version - English Language. I loved reading Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; less so the poems of Seamus Heaney (poetry was also an exclusive club I wasn’t admitted to). But it always felt like the poor person’s version. I’d go into my classroom with others who weren’t good enough to do Literature, and wonder how much more they were learning in there.

This exclusion stayed with me well into my twenties and The Classics felt totally out of reach for me. My experiences with them were short-lived in school and any interpretations taken from them were purely based on what Spark Notes had told me to think. I felt, simply, that they were not meant to be read by me. I wonder how many others have felt, or do feel, this way?

Nowadays, the cool girls aren’t just in the classroom - they’re on the internet, coming up with their personal curriculums and wearing the academia aesthetic like a costume of intellect. They’re sharing their 75 booked and making you feel like you can do it too, if only you had more time and less job. Hey, I love a personal curriculum and I have saved pins as far as the eye can see of tweed jackets and knee socks and Miu Miu reading glasses, but reading has become just that - an aesthetic. Even I can see it - a Note I post with a picture of a book and a journal in gets more likes than one without. People (myself included) see something in these artfully curated images; I like to think it’s hope: hope of becoming a better thinker, a better reader, a better person. Not just the hope of fitting in.

In truth, we’re all just as entitled as the next person to do what we want, how we want, and as an adult, I’m more aware of my own misbeliefs, and more keen to follow my instincts when it comes to my interests. Which is why I have thrown myself into learning more about literature and writing over the last 5 years. I’ve always loved learning, and this desire to expand my thinking has never gone away. My upcoming 2026 reading plans are wildly bold; a challenge to the younger me to grow my understanding of how to read better, one that will stretch me and allow me to live out the days I feel I may have missed out on in all those classes filled with cool girls. I’ll share more about that in an upcoming post.

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I have often felt like the outsider when it comes to a very specific community: the community of book kids, of which I was not one of them.

I read, sure, and I tried my hand at writing a story here and there, but it was never something I did a lot - or well. Not like the people you hear about, the ones who had their noses permanently in a book, always scribbling in notebooks as if they were born knowing they’d be writers. These origin stories, which I am sure are not as prevalent as they are in my imagination, placed them on something of an imaginary pedestal and lead me to the question: if you weren’t a book kid, were you ever really meant to be a writer?

I have a distinct memory of being around seven years old when my friend Laura read me a story she’d written. It was little more than three pages, but I was captivated by how she’d managed to come up with character names and made those characters do things at her will. I was in awe. Later that day, I went home intending to write my own. My dream of being a writer was born. But when I came to write all I could think of was her creation. When I tried to think of a story of my own, I couldn’t, and the result of an hour of trying was an almost exact replica of her own, even down to the names. I couldn’t create anything original, I didn’t know how to imagine my own world. I was deflated and, rather than coming back to try again, I wrote the experience off as one not to do again.

In my little seven year old brain, creativity felt like trying on a costume that didn’t quite fit. I hadn’t read enough, I didn’t know how to write beyond ‘Once upon a time there was a Princess in a castle…’ and, while I’m being incredibly harsh to a seven year old child, I didn’t feel good enough to do it. Maybe that’s where it began: the feeling I sometimes still get today, that I’m not quite creative enough, not quite “book-smart” enough, that I somehow missed the years when I was supposed to build those muscles.

Playing Catchup

We have a finite amount of time in this life and there are more books to read than any one person could do in a hundred lifetimes. So yes, sometimes I feel a pang of sadness that I didn’t read more as a kid. I could have filled my brain with more knowledge, I could have entered adulthood with more in my read pile than my to-be-read. How will I ever read all the books, short stories, novellas, essays and poems I want to read? (And that’s just the ones on my MUST read, let alone the ones that are simply on my Would Like To Read at some point in the future if time allows when there’s nothing else to do and no one will disturb me and the house doesn’t need cleaning and I don’t need to get groceries…).

I won’t. No one will. Even if I had read hundreds of books as a kid, I still wouldn’t be able to. But I do, very occasionally, feel as though I’ve missed an opportunity afforded only to those who did. I feel as though my education in reading and writing is only getting going properly in recent years. I may be doing myself a disservice, and those who know me personally may disagree. I have read widely, just with joy as my compass rather than expertise.

And that’s what I want - to be the expert. To know the references and the intertextuality and why some books become classics and others don’t. I’m on the journey to doing so…

But will it ever be enough?

Thanks for taking the time to read through these thoughts. This newsletter is a space for me to think out loud, and I love that much of it resonates with you. I’d love to discuss the topics here so leave a comment below and say hey 👋🏻

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If you’ve never heard of a commonplace book before, and you’re into journaling, collecting notebooks (which, judging by the thousands of you who have liked and hundreds of you who have reshared the below note, you are) and the general collation of ideas and quotes, then this is the post for you.

A quick note before you dive in: this post becomes exclusive to paid subscribers a little further down. Each month I share a longer, in-depth piece for supporters. It’s usually something practical and thoughtful on writing, reading or creativity. If that sounds like your cup of tea, you can start a free 7-day trial or unlock this as your free post.

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Like your own personal Pinterest full of quotes, a commonplace is a treasure trove of information, a thirst quencher in an inspirational drought, and a fun and unique way to chart your intellectual and personal history and interests.

It’s also a way to do it away from being online. I love Pinterest as much as the next Substacker, but being online constantly does have its major drawbacks, and being able to create a compendium of inspiration that’s totally offline can be hugely helpful, especially if you struggle with getting distracted when browsing for your next motivational motto.

If you’re not sure what to put in your commonplace book or second brain I will be sharing some inspiration and ideas below, but I heard a great quote from Elizabeth Filips (who I will go on to mention below) that you should ‘capture what surprises you’. If something you read or hear surprises you, it’s likely to be new information and worth noting down for future reference. But as well as surprising tidbits, a commonplace, for me, is a place to store things that inspire me, that make me think, that make me feel something.

I do a mixture of it all: from scholarly essays to online blog posts to conversations I might overhear in the street, I fill my commonplace with things I find interesting and might be useful to me when writing or looking for inspiration.

In this post, I’ll be looking at:

1. What is a commonplace?

2. A brief history of commonplacing

3. My commonplace journal and starting your own

4. The digital commonplace or second brain

5. Introducing mini essays to my collection

What is a commonplace?

There are many great explanations of what a commonplace actually is, and there are also some descriptions that get a little lost in the weeds with long systems, strict rules, or overly technical processes for how you “should” use one. Personally, I like to keep it simple so as to encourage me to use it.

For years, I filled countless notebooks (and, truly, I still do) with scribbles of thoughts, lines from books, snippets of conversations, ideas that sparked something, never knowing where I’d written it and when. I’d recall a quote I wanted and know it was in one of my notebooks but would have to spend time searching for the right one; a process that could take a while with notebooks scattered across drawers, handbags, cars and bookshelves.

The great hunt still happens occasionally with general idea-collecting (I don’t pretend to be fully reformed) but when it comes to specific quotes, insights, and moments I want to revisit, I now put them all in my commonplace book. Sometimes they also live in my “second brain,” which I’ll come to shortly, but the commonplace is the heart of it. It’s my curated archive of ideas I want to keep close, organised in a way that mostly makes sense to me.

Read more

Thank you, as ever, for taking the time to read this post. If you’d like to support me on my writing journey, you can find me on Instagram, buy me a coffee, or upgrade your subscription!

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I’m uploading every other day in December for Substackmas, catch up here:

Day one: I’m eating a packet of Monster Munch as I write this

Day two: The versions of ourselves we used to be

1. Christmas.

Because I’m a grown-up now, my partner and I decided to swap Christmas gifts early - like, 30th November early. You might think us mad, and that is quite possibly true, but we both knew what we were getting each other and we both really wanted them (I’m laughing as I type this at the sheer lack of patience displayed by us both).

Mine was this very laptop I’m writing on now. I talked through my very valid reason for needing (yes) this laptop in the post linked below and it has already improved my life by at least 89%, I’m pretty sure.

Having a clear break between when I’m working my day job and when I’m working on my writing has already helped my mindset, even just over the last week.

2. Embracing the weather.

I’ve always been someone who can appreciate the different seasons we experience here in the UK, so the Winter weather doesn’t get me down, in fact, I quite like when it gets dark and it’s cold and rainy outside. Is that not the perfect writing weather? I’ve gone down a rabbit hole in the past week or so, however, with taking this to the extreme and I now want to move to Svalbard, Norway. I’ve been watching Cecilia Blomdahl’s videos on YouTube - in particular, the ones she has done on the Polar Nights - and it looks absolutely magical.

I’ve got How to Winter on my Christmas list (to myself) as I think there’s something magical about embracing this time of year and living more in sync with the seasons. Winter is meant to be a time of hibernation, reflection, going inwards, so we can - in essence - be reborn when it starts getting lighter and warmer outside.

3. Currently Reading.

I’m slowly making my way through Shirley Jackson’s ‘Let Me Tell You’ after I was prompted to read even more of her work when diving into her writing routines and advice. Let Me Tell You is a collection of her short stories (mostly not published anywhere else), notes on domestic life, and essays on the craft of writing. She’s brilliant and it’s fascinating getting an insight into her thinking. She truly believed that a writer is not someone who only writes when they’re sat with a pen in their hand or a keyboard at their fingertips, but someone who is always observing, always creating stories.

Her creation about the toaster in her house has been one of my favourites so far, and shows just how in touch with her own imagination and creativity she was:

“The children around our house have a saying that everything is either true, not true, or one of Mother’s delusions. Now, I don’t know about the true things or the not-true things, because there seem to be so many of them, but I do know about Mother’s delusions, and they’re solid. They range from the conviction that the waffle iron, unless watched, is going to strangle the toaster, to the delusion that electricity pours out of an empty socket onto your head, and nothing is going to change any one of them.”

from Shirley Jackson, Let Me Tell You

It’s the perfect December read too: something you can pick up in quiet moments and then immediately feel inspired to scribble down your own thoughts.

4. Writing.

I started using Scrivener at the beginning of November to draft my novel after realising I was getting increasingly lost trying to track everything in Google Docs. This has been a complete game-changer. Yes, ok, it does scratch the itch I’ve mentioned before of being a planner-at-heart (not in terms of plot planning, but in terms of organisation and productivity), but it also just works really well. I love how easy it is to move chapters around if needed, and how the storyboard version of the layout gives you a really clear and simple overview of everything. It makes the novel feel both bigger and more manageable at the same time.

The character and setting templates have been really useful, too. Even though I already had most of this written elsewhere, the move from Docs into Scrivener made me slow down and spend a bit more time fleshing them out. I’ve added extra details and generally feel more grounded in the world I’m building. It’s made the writing process feel more intentional and honestly, more fun.

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5. Creating Hygge.

There’s nothing like flicking on the Christmas tree lights in the living room for an instant hit of nostalgic warmth and cosiness, and I’ve taken to writing in the living room now and then to soak up the vibes. The small things, they must be enjoyed while they’re here.

I’ve also been reading The Year of Living Danishly and recently watched a talk from the author here, so I’ve clearly been primed. Hygge, being such a deeply Danish idea, feels especially right for this time of year: warm light, soft blankets, mugs of coffee or chai tea (another current favourite), good books, and the sense that you’re in the right place at the right time: contentment. I’m trying to soak up as much of that as I can.

6. Romanticising my commute.

Can this ever really happen? Well, it’s December 1st today so let’s at least try for a month and call it a festive experiment. Spreading good cheer and all that.

My commute is unenjoyable at the best of times, and I’m not just saying this to complain. I live in the last town before reaching London Waterloo (on the fast train) on a busy commuting route in the South East, which means 95% of the time when boarding at 7.30am there are zero seats available. Fine, I will stand for 45 minutes. On the way home? If I’m there anything less than 10 minutes before it sets off to go back home I will also be standing. And all this for the pleasure spending upwards of £50 to stand on a dirty, overcrowded train full of tired and grumpy people.

HOWEVER, I clearly needed to get that out of my system so I can get to the actual point. I want to make a change to my mindset so I’m not turning up to work already miserable. How do you romanticise something so fundamentally unromantic? Good question.

A couple of times in the last few weeks I’ve used the forced uprightness - a time when I can’t get my laptop out to check a few emails - to get my notebook out and draft some ideas for short stories. The time flew by when I did this and I felt productive before the day had even started. So, perhaps it’s not about trying to sugar coat the commute into something its not (it will always be dirty and smelly), but trying to do what I can to find some magic in it - some writer magic.

7. Substackmas.

Right here, right now. I’m as surprised as you are that I’m here doing this, but I made a commitment to myself this year that I would prioritise writing and so going out of 2025 strong felt like a great move. And it is. I’m excited, energised and ready for all the writerly goodness that 2026 will bring me - one of which will include a finished manuscript (it WILL!).

8. Re-reading.

If there’s ever a month which calls for a re-read of your favourite book it has to be December. Cosy, comforting and familiar, I am currently re-reading A Mystery in White (yes, I am aware I’ve now said I’m currently reading 3 different books. This is, in fact, true.). It’s a cosy murder mystery where the cast of characters are literally snowed in the day before Christmas - talk about relevant.

After that, I’ve been feeling the urge to pick up I Capture the Castle because it’s my favourite book of all time and it has been a year or so since I read it. I might save it for early next year, though, because I have grand designs for 2026 in the form of The 2026 Roadmap to Becoming Obscenely Well Read - more on that soon, because I’m very excited about it.

9. A poem a day keeps the writer’s block away.

In one of the Writer’s Hours I attended recently someone mentioned how they often start their writing session by reading a Mary Oliver poem, so I’ve been following suit and using it as an easy in to my creative flow. It’s not everyday that I turn up to the page (laptop) full of creative ideas and inspiration, in fact it’s often more likely that I feel as though I have no words to write, but a few minutes of easing in gently often does inspire something in me to get going.

The Poetry Foundation has a wonderful website where you can access lots of poetry for free, but also has loads of other inspiring information if you’re after a creative boost.

10. Currently watching.

And finally, have you been watching Pluribus? It will never cease to amaze me how people come up with these amazing stories and this show has been great for its originality and ability to keep me engaged. The last episode focused on just one character for the entire hour and it wasn’t boring - that’s great writing and great acting.

Thanks for joining me for this post and day 3 of Substackmas. If you want to make sure you don’t miss a post, why not subscribe or catch up with the post below. I’d also love to hear what’s lighting you up this December, or what habits you’re putting in place to make it great!

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I’m posting every other day in December for Substackmas - Read Day 1 of Substackmas here

The joy of keeping a diary is being able to look back and see how much you’ve grown over the years, but, as a writer, they can also provide truly valuable fodder to inspire stories and characters.

I was going through a divorce when I wrote the entries below in 2018, and it’s obvious now that I was trying to make sense of my feelings, albeit not entirely successfully. I didn’t have the distance required to be able to separate my writing from my real life. Everything I wrote, and this includes my early attempts at fiction, kept collapsing back into autobiography. I’m glad, now, to be at a place where I’m able to write with a little less of my own interiority seeping into what I write, but back then I was so deep in my own turmoil that every story I tried to craft was basically a re-write of my own life.

Having said that, a diary is a space to be authentically you. I try, as best I know, to write without questioning myself or my thoughts - without thinking ‘Would this make a good story one day?’. A diary should be you, through and through. Yes, don’t we all daydream of a time far off in the future where our diaries are discovered and published and revered across the world - sure.

But the real benefit, the real growth, comes from writing without boundaries or fear of an audience.

I’ve shared a few short entries from some of those diary pages with a brief commentary alongside. If you enjoyed, let me know in the comments below, I’d truly love to hear from you.

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Diary Entry (2018)

“What to do when you want to write, you feel like you have a burning desire to write, but when you come to it you keep spouting utter shite that sounds pretentious and contrite?”

Look, I know we’ve all been here, right? As writers, I swear we go through a phase (do we ever fully grow out of it?) where we’re desperate to sound profound and clever and inspired (just me?). And nine times out of ten, that effort just leaves us sounding like a complete bellend. At least past me was able to recognise that though - small wins.

The joy of getting older (I am only 35, but I keep making myself sound like a wizened old 80-year-old, maybe I am still as pretentious as I was back then!) is that I do, indeed, care less about trying to sound clever. I actually want my voice to come through when I write now - I want it to have a hallmark of ‘Oh yeah, Sophie wrote that’, and I also want to read other’s work who sounds like them.

The best way I have found to get past this obstacle is to write, write and write some more. You have to get the initial few stories or essays out. Write until the initial brain-dump stories burn off, and suddenly there’s room for something else to emerge.

Diary Entry (2018)

“Today I noticed that whenever I’m given a prompt to write things, or even just sit to write, generally, I always tend to write things that feel sad, or fraught, or filled with unexpressed emotion. It feels as though this is what comes naturally, so let’s carry on shall we?"

I want to write fiction. I want to write untruths, maybe a half-truth I could deal with, but I certainly don’t want to write real pain.”

Looking back, I remember how desperate I was to write things that weren’t about my own life, but I genuinely didn’t know how. I was still deep in the trenches of wallowing, and writing about it was both helpful and unhelpful. It was cathartic in the way that writing always is, but also a little self-trapping. I am definitely one of those people that, given too much time alone with my own thoughts, I’d spiral into misery.

And while seven or eight years doesn’t sound like a huge amount of time in the grand scheme of life, I’m happy to have more life experiences under my belt to inform my writing (the divorce being a big one). Now I feel far more capable of attempting to write from different perspectives and voices, and writing from somewhere that isn’t just ‘this happened and I’m sad’.

I dreamt a lot about fighting things off from our house whilst I was with you. I dreamt that bears - brown, angry bears with fur that looked matted and tangled - kept trying to get into our garden and our home. I dreamt that they were trying to eat our cats with their yellow teeth and drooling gums. I’d relay the dreams to Jenna sometimes at work, when we should have been rearranging books or sweeping the floors, and we’d try to determine what they meant.

I still sometimes have those dreams, the feeling of something trying to get in somewhere and feeling the desperation long into the next day of trying to rid myself of them.

Ok, this is workable. I know it’s a dream and talking about your dream is the conversational equivalent of watching paint dry, but there is something in the imagery of the bears invading your personal space which could actually turn into something in a story - perhaps something in a magical realism genre? Right, you get the vision? Something wild, grotesque, beastly - forcing itself into the mundanity of every day, domestic life? That sounds like its got some teeth (pun intended).

When we’re younger, we’re much more selfish, so almost all of my entries were about what was happening to me and how I was feeling. That’s cool, that’s obviously what I needed to write at the time and, also, most of us don’t really have access to outside perspectives as we go through childhood and teenage-hood. Now, thankfully, my journalling tends to have a mix - there’s still a lot of internal reflection (hello, it’s me), but there’s also a lot more general observation of the world around me - and that’s the really useful stuff when it comes to writing.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed today’s instalment of Substackmas. If for nothing else than giving your future self a laugh, I would highly recommend keeping a diary now and then - it truly does give great insight into who you were and how far you’ve come - especially if you’re a writer.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like this post where I critique some of my old fiction writing…